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Can someone explain !!
thark
Member UncommonPosts: 1,188
Why is it that ...
When people complain about TSW it's always these 2 issues .
1 Bad Combat !
The Combat in TSW is absolutly not bad, you can move while shoting, roll..The only thing that reminds me of classic MMO combat is the "TAB targeting" But the skillwheel is what makes TSW really stand out and the ability to alter your strategy at all times makes it even better.
Seriousy, bad combat ?? Has these players even played this game more than a few hours while having a couple of abilities, and unlocked 0.5 % of the skillwheel ?
I think this is a pure case of rumour mill , players started to see that there was not much to complain about in this game, and just because someome felt the combat was abit lackluster , they now use it as a standard reply ..
And..Yes I have tried TERA, yes it has good MMO combat, but the diffrence here is that you are frozen in the spot when triggering skills..While in TSW you can move at all times..I think in some ways its better to be able to move all the time..
2. The Animations !
WHat is wrong with the animations, I most certainly can't see anything wrong with them..Infact I see very well done animations. Some used on several skills, is maybe the only complaint here..
Please enlighten me to why TSW has these 2 issues !!
Comments
im in the game designer school right now, the combat is ok its not great. I woudl spend more time polishing the animations. I feel the animations for combat is lackluster at best. Its probably why most people complain about the combat animations its pretty dull. Other then that its an average game at best, niche game one might say. Ive watched tsw streams constantly.
I feel whoever did the character animations did an ok job not great, i think its best if they take 1 or 2 months redoing animations then it should be fine. I certainly can see the complaint from reviews.
So you are basing your experience with TSW off some live streamed video ?
well yes ive been watching it streaming for quite some time. the midel sis a bit rough a litle work on it shoudl help fixing the problem my friend
I have absolutely no problem with the combat and animations either.
Sure the animations aren't on par with Age of Conan... but they don't distract from the game. At least not for me.
I have seen far worse in many other MMO's.
For example, the animations in LOTRO are far far worse and yet I had a blast playing that game for many years.
They were lies OP.
I sware those two abstract arguments were the corner stone of some companies anti-marketing campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCcvILXu1dY
This explains bad combat ui problems.
Animations Char models look like san andreas.
I've played TSW for a month, and did not enjoy combat at all. The skillwheel, while looking impressive at first, is filled with duplicates, and there is little flexibility once you're in combat. There is no need to do more than spam 1 or 2 abilities and watch your passives trigger.
As for animations, those definately don't help to make combat better, as they feel unconnected, and lack variety.
Those things are not the only problems for me with TSW though, and i don't have a real problem with animations apart from not being good enough to make unenjoyable combat at least look like you're doing something amazing.
My 2 cents on the issue. First as a disclaimer, I'm more of a slow player, and while I did try several weapon combinations, didn't get to the point of doing nightmares, or even finished the story (I'm in transylvania). Also, while I'm not playing right now (playing GW2, don't really have enough time for 2 games at the same time) I do love the game and plan on returning in a few months, at the very least to finish the storyline.
That said, I personally liked the combat in TSW, but I can see why lots of people might not (note that I'm talking about world combat, not dungeon boss combat). Pre-combat strategy is one of the big stenghts of the game, unlocking the skills you want, planning how to use them, when to use them, picking weapons, active and passive skills that have synergy between them and so on. When it comes to the combat itself, though, it can feel repetitive sometimes. No matter what combination (granted, I mostly focused on melee weapons) of weapons I used, combat eventually boiled down to spam 1 or 2 builders x 5, first weapon finisher, second weapon finisher, repeat. I knew different weapons had different uses, and different effects, and require different stats to look for, but as far as the combat itself they didn't feel particularly different from one another. That is one weakness in TSW, IMO, and heavily affects replayability. In other games, playing different classes really feel very different (a WoW warrior plays completely different than a rogue, for example), and while in TSW the weapons and deck is what determines your "class", playing a DPS heavy character didn't feel particularly different than playing a tank oriented one (which is what I did most of the times).
As for the animations, I work with 3D animations (mostly logo stuff) and do some hobbyist character animation (still learning), and I have to agree that while the animations in TSW are usable, they're not really great. It depends on which weapon you're using, blades aren't bad, for example, but I really miss the feeling of weight when using hammers, to use another example. I understand the technical reasons for that, it's hard to convey a feeling of weight when the animations or the lower body is independent from the upper body, but still it's something that kinda hits me sometimes. I also feel like the animations lack "character" to name it something, I sometimes feel like my character is just going trough the motions (in blades, for example) as a trained esgrimist instead of actually fighting for his life. And the last thing about them, is that there are several reused animations. I don't remember the specific names, but I do remember at least twice (in chaos magic mainly) replacing a builder skill not because it wasn't good, but because the animation was exactly the same than the finisher. I know it's not somethign too bad, but it's a bit of a pet peeve of me, I like to be able to see what ability I just used by looking at the screen.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
Honestly I dont see any of the problems.
as a mmo veteran that started out with Meridian59, I have played alot of mmo's...
This game is to me the best mmo out here right now, and everyone should play and see it for themself. Do the 3 day trial!
"Everyone" says "there is something wrong" but in reality there isnt. its just a rumor started by some people that wanted their friends and everyone else to play their prefered mmo instead.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
This exactly. I didn't mind the combat much from beta.
But, the uncanny valley ruined alot for me, even when i looked at footage from trailers. The worst is probably from ranged weapons.
Real life guns are usually associated with FPS and TPS gameplay. Aiming down the sight. Taking cover and staying away.
But, when combined with tab-targeting and the fact that mobs would close the gap in 3 seconds, max, it made it feel very wrong, even when we had super powers.
A Big complaint from who ?Folks that has reviewed TSW based on videos from other players or serios reviews ?
was one of the biggest topics throughout the beta forum discussions for sure...
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Combat takes excruciatingly long, and given that you have to move in order to survive, adds occur often since mobs are overcrowded and aggro too easily for a game where movement matters. In a movement combat game, you can't pack an area with mobs the same way you can with a stand and click game, especially when many of those mobs have 10 meter AoE's that you absolutely must avoid to survive.
Throw in the fact that they will chase you, and chase you, and chase you(at least as of the first update), and that the ability to manuever around mobs when you don't want to fight them is nigh impossible in a majority of cases, you find yourself /facepalming constantly as you travel, and you spend alot of time traveling in this game...
Even if combat was fun, these things would make it old very quick.
I don't have much of a gripe about the animations, other than they don't seem to fit with what you are doing in many cases.
For example: I can't remember the name of it(edit: it's a bloodshield, which give a light healand a small protection from damage), but there's a tiny little heal that you can do with blood magic. It's hard to call it a heal, really, because despite having almost no cooldown, it's not enough to keep your health up if you spammed it throughout a whole combat, even with a number of supporting passives.
And so, spam it you do. And the animation that represents it is kinda a big deal. If I remember correctly, your arm goes up, a big flashing red blood bubble thing envelopes you, the whole 9 yards. You'd think you'd have toggled some 3 minute CD invulnerability power or something.
But it's a common sight: Dude/dudette running across the field flashing red and flailing their arms around over and over, with a train of monsters in pursuit.
Don't get me wrong; I'm no hater of this game. I was disappointed by the sales figures; I thought that FC really tried to do something special and unique, and they achieved that goal in the genre and quest systems. But my appreciation of this game comes DESPITE the combat.
Or rather, the combination of the combat duration to mob density to frequent traveling makes the overall combat experience excruciating.
The fact that you made this thread basically proves my point.
I played it extensively through the two trials (finishing Soloman Island and doing just about all quests except for dungeons), and to me, combat is "meh".
On the build side, I can see it having a fair amount of attraction to the theory-crafters out there, trying to eke out the best combo. I'm a lightweight at this, but even I had some fun at it. But it's extremely time-consuming to search the wheel for new combos. A really nice site that would lay out the info in tabular form with nice, concise text for the various states, etc. would help greatly.
However, my impression of the overall build system is also "meh". As you "level" (i.e. get AP), I found that the builds lock you into "plateaus" of ability. Instead of being a somewhat smooth power progression, what I found is that you reach a relative maximum for the abilities you picked. If you want to break through that max, it often required trashing a good chunk of your build, meaning you have to go and build up AP again for another deep foray into a tree. At the beginning, when all you usually play with are 4 trees on the inner circle, that's not too bad. But when you start doing so with the outer circle and 12 trees with very expensive AP progressions, it's pretty painful.
And after you do reach a max on the outer ring (I guess that's at around 400 AP), it's a bit unclear as to how you progress. It looked to me that while maybe with a lot more AP you could get a little power with abilities (though I don't take that as a given), it rather seemed like gear was where it was at for getting better. I HATE gear grinding....
As for the combat itself, I didn't mind the animations, but the combat was an exercise in repetitiveness. Opener, 5x builder, weapon 1 dump, weapon 2 dump, and then intersperse with the special abilities with cooldowns, or maybe some heal spam. Mind you, I'm not a tremendous fan of the other MMO combat style either, where you are constantly looking or listening for your special abilities to proc, but at least there's a feeling like you could gain some tactical advantage by learning2play (as they say...). You get jumped enough that you often don't have time (or even the interest) in re-spec'ing for a fight.
So in the end, I found combat to be like a lot of other aspects of TSW--some interesting ideas about being different, but in the end, ones that I didn't find long-term enjoyable.
They have changed many things regarding animations and combat..There was a large patch just before live and well they have changed and added extra animatiions on every update , atleast as far as I can see
I think a lot of impressions came from the beta's. But what you need to remember is people get a gut feeling about a game, their main gripes may be combat/animations. But overall we are just not feeling it. You can't just narrow it down to 2 issues. I thought the opening to the game was atrocious, I probably made my mind up from that first cut scene ... that went on forever (hope that has changed). You can't pinpoint why a game fails or why a game succeeds. If you could then game development would be easy. But one thing is for sure first impressions have a dramatic effect on peoples overall perceptions. Those impressions are normally made from things like opening sequences, initial animations and first attempts at combat.
The only "problem" with TSW is that it's a niche game and definately not for everyone.
TSW is a thinker and people can't handle that :j
I agree with this, well said..:)
Initiual gaming experience is important..
But to judge a game based on a beta should basically be forbidden, even if that is impossible
Animations haven't changed much since late beta. Sure, some of them were improved, but overall, it looks pretty much the same. I can't explain why they look bad to me, they just do. They look stiff, twitchy and unrealistic.
As for movement while shooting and other similar things, I don't think they matter much TBH. As someone who loves both turn-based strategy games and action games, I don't care how slow or fast combat is. What matters is how interesting the abilities you get are and frankly, what I've seen of TSW's skills (all inner wheel AR, Pistol and Blade skills) is boring. Maybe it gets better later on, but first impressions are, indeed, important and that's the first-ish impression I got based on playing through Kingsmouth and parts of Savage Coast. I think TERA's combat is mediocre for the same reason, but TERA is also very restrictive build wise.
Sorry, but the animations are certainly not "well done".
They are rigid, and often not fluid at all. Best example is just, try jumping. That shows you the deeper issue with the animations – they just don't "connect".
It extends into combat. I don't think the combat is bad, but the animations and overall feel just isn't there. It's jarring; I can't really put my finger on it, it just feels like there is an ever slight delay to everything. Like my hits don't connect with the target well, it just feels like i hit my trigger and the mob hit animation simply comes too late. Or I hit roll and there's just that milisecond too much before the character responds.
You might not notice it, which is fine, but a lot of people do even tho they might not be able to really tell you what it is that irks them.
The production value of TSW just isn't there. I love the setting, the soundtrack, the quests, it's what I've always wanted... but I just can't commit to the game when I constantly feel like I have to work against my character, ruining the immersion for me. It's why I did not buy it after Beta and it's why I've only done the trial post launch.
I really hope Funcom is going to try and improve it. I'd sub as a Lifer in a heartbeat, but I'm not going to get my hopes up since Funcom is hurting, and I can't think of an MMO that ever managed to improve these things post launch.
The perception of "disconnect" between your character and the world is often something deeply rooted in the engine, and I don't see Funcom having the resources to do anything about it. Alltho I think it is the single biggest issue that will keep the game from growing in the long run.
These days, if you're asking for a sub, the production value has to feel like a AAA title.