Quote Originally Posted by Alhanelem View Post
In those fighting games, animations play a lot faster and you aren't locked in place for several seconds at a time when you throw a punch. A punch is a quick fast animation and by the time you can even press another button, the animation is usually over anyway. So your example is very poor- it's only an example of animation lock not SIGNIFICANTLY impacting gameplay (because most fighting games are so fast that you aren't affected by it). You also seem to fail to understand that animation blending is going to be implemented- You are not going to "slide around" as you do things. You are going to do things on the run- Animation blending smooths the transition from one motion to another, such that even when you interrupt an animation, it still looks reasonably natural.

"Animation lock" is HUGE in a fighting game. You throw out a dragon punch and miss and it means you can't do anything on the way down, in which case you get destroyed by your opponent. It's not really any different than throwing a Chaos Thrust at a bad time and getting blown up by Ifrit.

I know that animation blending is going to be implemented. I don't care about how it looks, that's not the point. It's a gameplay mechanic that you are saying is always bad when it is fundamental to many types of games being good. It forces the player to make a choice when they press a button.

If you're telling me that good strategy means not using an ability that I should have time to use but don't because of animation lock locking me in place for about 10 years while the enemy does whatever the hell he wants (the enemies sure as hell aren't hindered by this), I'm going to tell you you're full of crap
This right here - "an ability I should have time to use" WHY should you? You KNOW the ability takes X amount of time to complete. If you don't have that amount of time, then either don't press the button or face the consequences of being locked in place. This is what made good players in 1.0 - more than just memorizing a rotation, they knew when they could attack and how far they could push it before needing to hold back.

Oh, and enemies were hindered by animation lock. You could see this in effect when kiting things.