Animation Lock: Why don't you like it?

topic.


I prefer Animation Lock for aesthetics in most cases, but I recall it being a problem for many in general.

I am curious to hear why it is seen as inferior to global cool downs, in terms of immersion/battle/etc.

Ifrit and his cracks for example.
If ur stuck in animation-lock, you dont get out of the cracks before they erupt. Thats one of the problems we had with it.

Global cooldowns and animation lock aren't the same thing at all...

The distaste for animation lock has less to do with the restriction on how fast you could use abilities and more to do with the restriction on movement in content that required you be able to gtfo at a moments notice.

I personally prefer it over the gcd and sliding around while you do skills route though.

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Originally Posted by Alegis

Ifrit and his cracks for example.
If ur stuck in animation-lock, you dont get out of the cracks before they erupt. Thats one of the problems we had with it.

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Doesn't that undermine the challenge of the fight?

As far as I understand that fight was plagued by tremendous amounts of lag, but as far as timing your attacks to properly avoid cracks, I think that mechanic was working as intended.

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Originally Posted by KiriA500

Global cooldowns and animation lock aren't the same thing at all...

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both of them are methods to prevent spamming skills in short periods of time. we are getting one in place of the other.

Because it was annoyed. Ifrit's battle for example, when I was a WHM, someone blamed me that I didn't move away from cracks cause of animation lock. It's what it made them thought I suck. =/

You don't need to *slide* around. In another game they animated upper/lower body separately. so you could run around, and upper body would rotate, and attack; lower body would run. If you stand still and attack it's the normal animation.

I don't want animation-lock, cause it's just annoying being rooted for the duration of an attack; Maybe for some skills it would be ok, but in general no.
I think the GCD is ok. I think it will be somewhat of an non-issue at higher lv.

Animation lock was bad mostly for fights like Ifrit where you had to "dodge" attacks. Mages finishing a spell cast as the wrong time will kill them. This also applies you using WS at the wrong time. IMO Global cool down are not a fix nor is it inferior to Animation Lock. Global Cool downs are more like Spam prevention then anything else. They are 2 different solutions to 2 different problems.

ifrit is more of the server sucking theres times your already hit but its happens a few second later.

The general distaste of animation lock comes from how terribly it was done in 1.x in my opinion. It was a good system but it was done in a very flawed way. The animations lasted too long and the lag was too much to account for. What they needed to do was fix it, not remove it and they have everything they need to fix it and I'll tell you why in four major points.

*lt;dr version in bold*

I'll go ahead and knock this one out first because people have a tendency to over look it or brush it aside as a non-issue. Immersion is very important to a lot of people. If you want the game to succeed truly as a Final Fantasy, people need to be immersed and by having a characters break the laws of physics and throw anatomy out the window, I'm sorry but you've lost any character believability and a lot of immersion. Some will argue that it's a fantasy game but even in fantasy you need to be able to believe the character. In a world where magic exists, I can believe magic can happen but if you say that my characters spine can move like it's made of rubber then I'm going to lose that believability.

It restricts the creation of visually pleasing animations. Instead of asking "Will this look good?" they will ask first "Can we make it work while running?" and because of that you lose a great aesthetic to the game. In this day and age, or heck for a long time now it's not been all about gameplay. It's also about aesthetics and good aesthetics lead to a visually pleasing game which will attract more people. I am NOT saying that they are mutually exclusive but they can co-exist and they need to find a better balance and this is part of that balance.

No animation lock is down right irritating! If you leave the maximum effect range of a skill before it 100% completes, your skill cancels. Even if your character performed the actual hit, it cancels. How is that better than being stuck for 1-3 seconds? If you've ever been a Whm healing DPS who move around a lot, you can sympathize with this irritation and I am willing to bet you will agree that you don't want this infiltrating other areas of combat.

Let's face it, it was a tactical gameplay mechanic that made you think before you acted and made most boss fights actually engaging and done right that is a positive to the game. No animation lock removes that gameplay mechanic and that makes the game much more of a mindless spam fest. Instead of thinking before you act, you just simply act. A lot of the negative buzz around Alpha was that it was mindless and boring, why do you want it to be more boring?

I'd love to know if anyone has any counter points or anything to add to these points, this has always been one of my biggest worries about ARR that I feel they aren't handling properly.

http://ouryouth.my/ouryouth/wp-conte...-meme-why.jpeg

Seeing how we were handed a lot of content, where we had to be constantly on the move (instance speedruns, dodging Ifrit's cracks, "dance around" the target in order to pull off combos etc.), the animation lock started to get more and more in the way of our performance. When the unresponsive gameplay and sloppy controls start to get into the way of player's performance, the funfactor takes a deep, deep dive.

Not to mention, considering the future of PvP content, anilock in every skill is simply beyond comprehension. Considering a cat-and-mice-situation between two players, simply either one using a SINGLE skill - heck, ANY SKILL - would have most likely resulted to either getting mauled, or retreating succesfully.

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Originally Posted by Rau

Doesn't that undermine the challenge of the fight?

As far as I understand that fight was plagued by tremendous amounts of lag, but as far as timing your attacks to properly avoid cracks, I think that mechanic was working as intended.



both of them are methods to prevent spamming skills in short periods of time. we are getting one in place of the other.

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k bye.

(Bad designed game, now undermine challenge... lol)

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Originally Posted by Rau

both of them are methods to prevent spamming skills in short periods of time. we are getting one in place of the other.

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Yet you were able to activate skills while locked in an animation. Animation locking was just a flaw in game design which they couldn't easily fix...which is why we won't have it in the new version.

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Originally Posted by Rau

both of them are methods to prevent spamming skills in short periods of time. we are getting one in place of the other.

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you know what's good way to prevent spamming too? TP. if you could spam skills, you'd run out of TP within a few seconds, then you couldn't spam anymore. problem solved.
GCD is probably just there so PS3 users who need to navigate skill bars, can stand a chance in PvP for example, or don't fall behind to much in DPS department in raids etc.
Animation lock doesn't prevent skill spamming at all.

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Originally Posted by Rau

I am curious to hear why it is seen as inferior to global cool downs, in terms of immersion/battle/etc.

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It has nothing to do with "immersion". Animation Lock could give more reality in a static game, where people don't have to move aroung a mob, or through the batteflield. But as FFXIV 1.0 was and FFXIV: ARR will be, it's not good, because in many fights you can't stand in the same spot for all its duration. With this new concept of fight the Animation Lock looks amiss, something close to FFXI style.

Animation lock shut down a lot of people from doing what they needed to do. This effect was able to nullify a person's usefulness due to game mechanics in certain cases. In the end, it was just the way the engine worked and we had to deal with it. Now that we don't I think most of the player base will be relieved that you can direct your character where you want at all times.

I like the animation lock more than being able to run around while using abilities+ a global cooldown as we've seen it in 2.0.

You can see it as bad programming, because it stops you from running from cracks on iffy for example - you can also see it as a combat mechanic. And it is/was possible to do ifrit anyways, plus without the huge latency differences for US/EU players the impact wouldnt have been that big.

Of course I complained about it as well then I died to eruptions, but that doesn't mean i would want it removed - I liked the animation lock and I wish it was still there in 2.0...

A system where you're bound during animations of skills can work if it's implemented correctly.

FFXIV 1.0 was very bad example because you had to wait till your weapon skill animation completed before being able to move your character. In Ifrit fight this caused a good player to watch the log for Ifrit's combat skills, only after you know what Ifrit's combat skill was then you know if you need to run or can attack. This is not my idea of a fun combat system.

Tera bounds you during animation of skills, however you don't see anyone complaining about it. The reason why Tera's bound animation works is each class has abilities to be able to breakout of the animation such as skills to dodge, jump back, and block.

ARR is heading in direction where you can move and attack, this is similar to GW2 combat system. Without animation lock doesn't mean you need a GCD. There has to be a cool down to prevent you from spamming of attacks, especially in a game that will have PvP. Each skill can have different cooldowns such as what is done in GW2 as well as similar skills having their cool downs linked.

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Originally Posted by Rau

topic.


I prefer Animation Lock for aesthetics in most cases, but I recall it being a problem for many in general.

I am curious to hear why it is seen as inferior to global cool downs, in terms of immersion/battle/etc.

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the combat feels very unfluent, not really active and it does not make fun.

why should i be bound for 2-3 secs on the ground after successfully casting a cure spell? how awful is that?!

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Originally Posted by Pseudopsia

Animation lock can work if it's implemented correctly.

FFXIV 1.0 was very bad example because you had to wait till your weapon skill animation completed before being able to move your character.

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well and thats the definition of animation lock.. congrats..

animation lock -> bound on the ground till animation is finished

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Originally Posted by Gentaro

You can see it as bad programming, because it stops you from running from cracks on iffy for example - you can also see it as a combat mechanic. And it is/was possible to do ifrit anyways, plus without the huge latency differences for US/EU players the impact wouldnt have been that big.

Of course I complained about it as well then I died to eruptions, but that doesn't mean i would want it removed - I liked the animation lock and I wish it was still there in 2.0...

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"game mechanic"... sorry... if a so called "game mechanic" which it wasnt .. is so annoying from preventing to play the game without any delays .. this isnt a game mechanic.. ask thousands of players who left the game.

the gameplay till the end of 1.0. was just horrible. you fought the gameplay and not the boss itself very often.. and THATS NOT A GOOD THING. you just should listen to yourself what you are talking..

I agree that the game is too flashy and the effects are too big, I would also like to add that even giant powerful looking mobs shake and twitch from regular attacks as if they're weightless balloon animals.

Being bound to the ground wasnt so bad if its for aesthetics i think its fine. What really sucked was the animation lock that lagged behind your actions unseen till ifrit's cracks and plumes got you. Because even though the animation lock had finished for you and you were moving again the game still had you where you were stood x seconds ago.

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Originally Posted by Arkine

I agree that the game is too flashy and the effects are too big, I would also like to add that even giant powerful looking mobs shake and twitch from regular attacks as if they're weightless balloon animals.

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they already said, that they are adjusting (decreasing) these "being hit" animations in the beta.. regarding the amount of damage is taken.. and for bigger monsters........

!!!

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Originally Posted by Alaltus

Being bound to the ground wasnt so bad if its for aesthetics i think its fine.

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i think the animations in 2.0. are VERY fine too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxAVvM8kyEQ

the paladin slash attack looks great.. the monk's and that of the dragoon, too.. without animation lock..


i say yes to dynamic battles which make fun.. and no to animation lock, stupid delays and unfluent gameplay..


People, let 1.0. go!! fucking damn. its a game that flopped because of this.. really paradoxic to see a thread like that. your memories seem to blend you.

I don't like being stuck in animation if I have to move, but I also don't like the cheesy breaking of an animation either. I don't think they can satisfy me either way.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

well and thats the definition of animation lock.. congrats..

animation lock -> bound on the ground till animation is finished

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You should read my full post, you're taking my comment out of context.

I'll reword it to fit your tight definition of animation lock.

The issue with animation lock is how you hit one long weapon skill, Chaos Thrust for example, if at any time during that skill Ifrit used an eruption you would not get away, then you link this in with the bad 1.xx latency you had about 1 second to react to seeing eruptions in the log to avoid them.

Animation lock, I don't think was designed to avoid you spamming skills, I think it was more to do with Crystal Tools sucking for MMOs, look at FFXIII and FFXIII-2, they didn't have to worry about whether you could move whilst using a skill, so it probably wasn't possible.

The skill with Ifrit shouldn't be only stick to short animation skills, and it shouldn't be to stare at the log, I want to enjoy the graphics whilst I am playing and animation lock along with latency requires that, miss time a Chaos Thrust (which we all know is a powerful weapon skill) by 1 or 2 seconds it could mean being hit, remove the animation lock and it means you can use skills whenever you want.

for me it wasn't so much that the animations duration being the main problem, it was the latency. using a ws that lasted maybe around 2-3 secs (taking a good guess) was kinda so so but the lag/latency was terrible which we can all agree. And personally i felt the lag/latency was the killing blow to why ppl wanted shorter ws animations which apparently happened in alpha then lead to ppl saying you barely see what happened along with ppl just spamming a few select abilities.

I didn't mind the lock for some ws but being locked for stuff like provoke and stuff was just silly. Chaos Thrust and such should lock you place.

Animation lock made perfect sense with the old fights and old combat system. People complaining about being locked while eruptions spawn under you are kind of missing the point of what others in the thread are saying. You were SUPPOSED to die if you carelessly used your abilities and weaponskills. Every boss with attacks that you needed to avoid had safe windows/ways of preventing death on lock.

They definitely had the ability to adjust/remove animation lock if they wanted (in fact I think that they increased it on Doomspike II at one point). Tons of single player games lock you in place while you attack, so I never really got why people hate it so much. Animation lock is the only thing that made the old fights and combat system actually work.

That said, I don't really care much that it's not in 2.0 as long as they make the combat system good and try to keep the pacing of fights similar. Everything bosses did in 1.0 had a lot of weight behind it and it made tanking fun.

it's a form of self crowd control
sure you have control over when it happens but even the best players mess up as a result of it

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Originally Posted by Alegis

Ifrit and his cracks for example.
If ur stuck in animation-lock, you dont get out of the cracks before they erupt. Thats one of the problems we had with it.

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I had this issue before I got an SSD. Once I upgraded, load times increased by quite a bit and it was no longer an issue for me.

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Originally Posted by Arkine

I agree that the game is too flashy and the effects are too big, I would also like to add that even giant powerful looking mobs shake and twitch from regular attacks as if they're weightless balloon animals.

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That was in alpha, it has been mentioned on the forum and a dev commented that they are looking into changing it for beta....
also the flashy graphics thingy has its own thread...

just sayin

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Originally Posted by Enma

It has nothing to do with "immersion". Animation Lock could give more reality in a static game, where people don't have to move aroung a mob, or through the batteflield. But as FFXIV 1.0 was and FFXIV: ARR will be, it's not good, because in many fights you can't stand in the same spot for all its duration. With this new concept of fight the Animation Lock looks amiss, something close to FFXI style.

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Not sure about you, but if people in this game can just run by and spam spells and weaponskills without having to stop moving im going to lose my fucking mind. This is a Final Fantasy game, this isn't Quake or some FPS. Please give me real believable animations, this is 2013! I don't want some cheap fucking game!

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Originally Posted by AmyNeudaiz

The general distaste of animation lock comes from how terribly it was done in 1.x in my opinion. It was a good system but it was done in a very flawed way. The animations lasted too long and the lag was too much to account for. What they needed to do was fix it, not remove it and they have everything they need to fix it and I'll tell you why in four major points.

*lt;dr version in bold*

I'll go ahead and knock this one out first because people have a tendency to over look it or brush it aside as a non-issue. Immersion is very important to a lot of people. If you want the game to succeed truly as a Final Fantasy, people need to be immersed and by having a characters break the laws of physics and throw anatomy out the window, I'm sorry but you've lost any character believability and a lot of immersion. Some will argue that it's a fantasy game but even in fantasy you need to be able to believe the character. In a world where magic exists, I can believe magic can happen but if you say that my characters spine can move like it's made of rubber then I'm going to lose that believability.

It restricts the creation of visually pleasing animations. Instead of asking "Will this look good?" they will ask first "Can we make it work while running?" and because of that you lose a great aesthetic to the game. In this day and age, or heck for a long time now it's not been all about gameplay. It's also about aesthetics and good aesthetics lead to a visually pleasing game which will attract more people. I am NOT saying that they are mutually exclusive but they can co-exist and they need to find a better balance and this is part of that balance.

No animation lock is down right irritating! If you leave the maximum effect range of a skill before it 100% completes, your skill cancels. Even if your character performed the actual hit, it cancels. How is that better than being stuck for 1-3 seconds? If you've ever been a Whm healing DPS who move around a lot, you can sympathize with this irritation and I am willing to bet you will agree that you don't want this infiltrating other areas of combat.

Let's face it, it was a tactical gameplay mechanic that made you think before you acted and made most boss fights actually engaging and done right that is a positive to the game. No animation lock removes that gameplay mechanic and that makes the game much more of a mindless spam fest. Instead of thinking before you act, you just simply act. A lot of the negative buzz around Alpha was that it was mindless and boring, why do you want it to be more boring?

I'd love to know if anyone has any counter points or anything to add to these points, this has always been one of my biggest worries about ARR that I feel they aren't handling properly.

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Solution: Make the animation END when you move (you're supposed to stop casting when you move, so why the hell not make the animation stop?)

Also, no animation lock never made me stop and think instead of during Ifrit, at which point worrying about getting trapped in animation lock and hit by cracks only served to get people needlessly killed.

I never had a problem with Animation Lock since it was a gameplay mechanic, no arguing around that. The problem with it reared it's head when SE decided to change boss encounters. There were no complaints over the locks, least not widespread with the original 5 NMs we had, since those mobs followed the tank and spank route of XI. It was only during Ifrit that this came about and alot of the hatred for animation locks came from actually having to adjust your skill use to counter what the boss was doing as opposed to just spamming away as was the norm prior. Using a skill meant that you were locked not only for the duration of the skill but also were in a different spot server wise which lead to multiple deaths. The unbearable at times lag of 1.0 just exasperated this issue.

Like someone mentioned earlier, Tera has animation locks but it isn't an issue for 3 main reasons. Not everything has animation locks so you could buff on the go or bind on the go for example so it has smart uses of when to lock and when not to lock. Animation length is also not extremely long and while there are a few long animations, those animations could be shorten by using another skill prior to it. Animations themselves can also be canceled by dodging or blocking out of it. You still have to commit when you use a skill but the due to low root times and being able to dodge out of it (there is still a CD on dodge so you had to be mindful), it became a non-issue for PvE and PvP.

All in all, I have no problems with animation locks (I do play lots of Street Fighter >.> ) as long as it's done smartly and within the context of the game.

Characters shouldn't be locked during battle at any time, and especially in a game that aims at having any kind of real pvp. Anyone that has pvp'd past ballista in any MMO knows that being locked in place equals a swift death.

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Originally Posted by Radacci

You don't need to *slide* around. In another game they animated upper/lower body separately. so you could run around, and upper body would rotate, and attack; lower body would run. If you stand still and attack it's the normal animation.

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This would be far worse in my opinion, footwork is one of the most important parts of the martial arts and I would cringe every time I saw someone use a skill while running if they did that. Then you have to consider how they would make a skill like dragon kick work where you're in the air for a good portion of the skill. You'd either have to lock them down, make them do the slidey floaty thing, or not make animations where your feet leave the ground. I'd much rather have the animation lock, or even the slide if it meant I got to have badass skills like dragon kick.

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Originally Posted by Digirotta

Not to mention, considering the future of PvP content, anilock in every skill is simply beyond comprehension. Considering a cat-and-mice-situation between two players, simply either one using a SINGLE skill - heck, ANY SKILL - would have most likely resulted to either getting mauled, or retreating succesfully.

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I think too many people here just have bad memories of animation lock in Ifrit, as a gameplay mechanic (and it is a gameplay mechanic, don't even try to argue that crap) animation lock can work very well. Especially in pvp. The issue with it in pvp for ffxiv woud be that it's not an action/fighting game so we couldn't rely on a hitstun effect to keep them in place while we used a skill. Even still though, animation lock could be added and worked around in pvp if they gave classes the right skills, in pvp the focus would be on locking down the enemy with a short hard cc effect at the right time then bursting and retreating before they could make any significant counter attack. Pvp would be about timing cc and winning trades. It's not that animation lock can't work in pvp or games where mobility is important (It's worked in countless games before, and in games where mobility was far more important and mistimed skills were punished much harder) they just chose to go a different route.

I don't hate the lack of animation lock, but skills made from this point onwards are likely to look rather lackluster.

Animation blending > animation lock.

Animation lock = stupid.

ON ALL POINTS.

Playing a game with a forced lag.. lol -_-;

It's not forced lag, it's you committing to a skill and getting punished for it if you choose incorrectly. The problem with it in 1.0 was that you essentially locked yourself in position for a long time due to animation length + combo length. All they needed to do was add something that allows you to cancel the current animation should you need to, but on a cooldown, so you can choose whether to continue your skill for damage or move out for survival.

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Originally Posted by Radacci

you know what's good way to prevent spamming too? TP. if you could spam skills, you'd run out of TP within a few seconds, then you couldn't spam anymore. problem solved.
GCD is probably just there so PS3 users who need to navigate skill bars, can stand a chance in PvP for example, or don't fall behind to much in DPS department in raids etc.
Animation lock doesn't prevent skill spamming at all.

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You almost managed to make the cooldowns into a good thing. Almost.