Animation Lock: Why don't you like it?

[Shougun]

It was the timing critical and position critical Boss battles that made it a problem though. Did anyone complain about animation lock while xp grinding?

To draw a parallel:

Nobody ever complained that Link in 'The Legend of Zelda' (NES) couldn't jump because the game never required him to.

Conversely:

People were extremely frustrated over the unforgiving jumping mechanic in 'Castlevania I' (NES) because the level designs in that game required absolute precision jumping.




Ideally, I'd prefer that Chaos Thrust (it really is the best example) change from a total animation lock length of ~4 sec to 2.5 sec

Allow a total cancellation of the move up to the point where the first hit connects (using jump button), and allow movement immediately upon the 3rd and final hit.

Any time between those two points, you are committed to that move and that spot on the ground.

(I think we actually agree on the basic idea here. We might just have different ideas of where to set the margins)



I can't argue with what were obviously animation bug/limitation issues in FFXI. Raises caused all sorts of havoc with animation priority in that game and some of the weird stuff that happened was almost comical

.

Imo, of a perfect world, Chaos Thrust should let you move around (*) but keep you facing the enemy, so say you are running towards the monster and you go around to the back (while using Chaos Thrust) your character keeps angled at the monster as if you cut along its side, it would look cool- I think.

*Could also make moving in staggered amounts (like the animation), where during the large swings you get the most movement (if holding a movement key) and during the pauses you get no (to little) movement. (momentum of the weapon skill)

If you want to cancel they either make jump a cancel key (meaning no one is going to play froggy during combat because it will cancel your combo -which I think would make some people happy) or make a cancel key like esc.

To go along with that I would also recommend (and like to see) many fold attacks to provide damage at each hit and not at the end, its a minor annoyance to see many fold attacks damage at the end (Alhanelem suggested this too). Also it would mean canceling a multifold attack like using chaos thrust would be logical, like hitting a few times then veering away from the monster canceling the last effect. (I'm not saying Tera combat, since that is hit box detection, I'm saying if you aren't facing the target it cancels it, if you cancel it your self it cancels it (but what effects done so far are still done - and the cost of the spell :P).


Would give a new meaning to fast/evasive monsters... They could jump away from you and if the game detects out of distance or behind you the rest of the WS would miss and an attentive player could cancel and react quickly - or inversely they could dodge some of a bosses multifolded attack just by moving too far away or behind (allowing SE more types of damage "burst" / "multithreaded burst").

(Again this is just relying on "within range" + "facing / cone" which FFXIV -already- had these features, like dodging the Dodo cone breath - or getting out of the way of bad breath / dragon roar - its not hit box detection stuff, which could take a while to make since its not already made).