Warhammer Combat Clunkiness Dissected and Analyzed [Vid included]

[NutellaGrande]

As anyone who isn't living under a rock knows, Warhammer's Open beta started last Sunday (last Friday for previous beta-testers). Along with giving us some more time to applaud what Warhammer does well, its also given us a closer look at what it doesn't.

I made a quick video showcasing what I believe are the most blatant problems with Warhammers current combat system, the things that need to be fixed 100% and quickly if this game is going to go anywhere with WoW fans. I consider these the main contributors to the "clunky" feel of Warhammer's combat, listed below:

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT:

Animations are how you tell if a spell that doesn't do an easily recognizable amount of damage / healing immediately (i.e hots, dots, debuffs, buffs) acutally registered. When you cast a spell, if you see the animation that should mean the spell worked, you shouldn't have to check a buff / debuff bar to make sure. If an animation doesn't go off, then you know your spell didn't go off, again, without checking a buff / debuff bar.

With a big heal or a big damage swing, you're going to recognize the number that comes up as being that spell, and it effectively negates the acutal animation for players in recognizing whether things are happening or not - its annoying when the animation isn't there, but its not crucial.

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The problem currently is that if spells misfire, the animation still goes off, if spells fire, sometimes it goes off twice or not at all. Its sending mixed signals and in the end you as a player can't even trust what your eyes are seeing on the screen as to what is actually happening, so you have to check the buff / debuff bar EVERY time you cast a spell that has an effect that isn't immediately recognized on your target.

This is both extremely sloppy, and very difficult to play effectively with.

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The Video, available here:
All footage was taken TODAY (latest patch)

http://www.warhammermovies.com/movieview.php?id=479

Can be streamed or downloaded at Youtube, WarhammerTV, or Filefront.
*Thanks to Ixobelle for Youtube upload.

is broken up into sections, and better explained in the corresponding sections in the post below. Watch it, and read the sections as you go to fully understand whats going on.
************************************************** ************

1) Spell Animations Finish Before Casting is Finished.

This problem occurs becuase WAR's cast animations are static, while WAR's cast times are dynamic (due to pushback from damage). In WoW, every race/class has their own cast animation, its the same for every spell, it can go on indefinitely before the spell fires, and its exactly the same throughout. Whether your uninterrupted frostbolt is 2.5 seconds or your LOLFELHUNTER frostbolt is 12 seconds, your frostyhands are there until the castbar finishes, and your frostbolt goes off.

In WAR, each spell has its own separate animation, and its timed to end when the base cast time of the spell ends. What do you get when your cast time is increased by a second? a second delay between the firing of your frostbolt and when your frostbolt spell finishes, throwing your brain off, and making it look clunky.

2) Spells Made Instant Cast by Abilities Have Full Animations.

This problem is most notable on two classes who change spell cast times the most: Shaman and Archmage. When you go from 1-4 waagh or force, your spell animation increases in speed to match the change of the base cast time of the spell, as displayed in the video. The problem comes when you hit 5 waagh or force, as the animation instead of becoming instant, reverts to the FULL CAST TIME animation, the longer the spell, the worse. If the animation lasts more than 1.5 seconds, you acutally have to interrupt your own animation for an instant cast spell to cast another spell on your next global cooldown. This combined with #1 and #3 can be a real pain the butt, and is extremely clunky feeling.

3) Animation Irregularites When Spamming Spells.

Many classes have a "spam spell", an instant cast spell with no cooldown. When you use this spell multiple times in a row (by spamming the button) You don't get the same animation over and over again, you get weird irregularities, sometimes it won't go off, sometimes it goes off multiple times rapidly, sometimes only part of the animation shows up. This makes it very difficult to tell when your spells are going off, if they've gone off, and how many times they've gone off without looking at debuff bars. This is exasperated becuause the debuff bars in this game are pretty much worthless, as they are tiny and are mixed with your buffs, making finding things practically require mouseover.

4) Kiting is IMPOSSIBLE: Animations Misfire with Directional Changes, Instant Cast Spells with Directional Requirements Wont Fire Unless You Are Facing Your Target for 1+ Seconds


This ones a real killer. You can't 180 + instant cast + 180 and keep running. I'm not sure if this is an animation issue (instant cast spells have an animation time, unfortunately) or if its a latency issue, but it SUCKS. I can't get instant cast spells to fire that have directional requirements without facing the target for much longer than it takes to 360 kite.

What makes this one even worse, is the full animation of the spell goes off, even though the spell didn't fire, making you ONCE AGAIN have to check debuff bars to make sure your spells go off.

This is probably the worst issue, by far.


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Its been mentioned a few times "Give me WAR gameplay with WoW combat" -- I couldn't agree more. All of these problems build on eachother, and are exacerbated by the sub-par UI for buffs / debuffs, making landing spells more work than fun a lot of the time.

I'm not sure how they will be able to modify spellcasting for dynamic spell cast times without taking a step backwards and using a static animation like WoW, but something needs to be done.

All this aside, the games a TON of fun, and unlike WoW, I feel like I can log in for an hour and get something accomplished besides chilling in org waiting for BG queues to pop or cutting myself when we're missing 1 guy to get a 3's or 5's going.

Mythic has been steadily improving their game, and each patch is noticeable, hopefully the trend continues.

[Decommissioner]

I agree and props for using Infected Mushroom.

[Winterblink]

Originally Posted by NutellaGrande

4) Kiting is IMPOSSIBLE: Animations Misfire with Directional Changes, Instant Cast Spells with Directional Requirements Wont Fire Unless You Are Facing Your Target for 1+ Seconds

I don't like jumpshots anyway, so please don't change it. Just the bug with the animation should be fixed.

It fits with the warhammer universe too. "Fleeing" (=kiting) opponents shouldn't be able to fight back.

[Neb]

I think the animations need some fine tuning, but I am glad Mythic is focusing on them last. I know, a lot of people want graphics to be super sharp on release, and everyone is saying it needs to exceed WoW on launch day to get anywhere, but I strongly disagree. I'd rather the gameplay be rich, full of life, and stable then have sharp graphics on release. Graphics, for me, are down on the list for liking a game enough to play it.

I think Mythic needs to grab ENOUGH people to keep development going, and methodically smooth out the game. As the game continues to improve and change, more and more people will join up, via word of mouth, and etc.

The bar that people set for MMOs now is simply to high. You will NEVER be happy at launch. Mythic does not need to beat WoW in their first year, maybe even the second year. They don't even need to come close to it. What they need is enough revenue to keep development going and build up their population.

Edit, sorry re-read my post, the second part is not directed at you OP, just felt I should clarify that. :P

[Loomdun]

I think #4 might be intended in order to prevent the bounce fighting.

Yet at the same time I think they could quite possibly have the graphics messed up because it fires either way.

But either way the 180 + cast + 180 = bounce fighting, and they didn't want to support Skipping + fighting since the very start. So this is probably something intended

The graphics firing though is not

[Vargs]

Great video, really touches on some key points and explains them well.

[nathrakh]

This MUST be fixed before release.

Mythic will take huge hits in reviews and lose a lot of sales.

We're saying this for their benefit.

[ThatOneGuyFromBefour]

Pretty much just nailed every single problem I have with this game and why I won't be playing it for very long unless it's fixed.

[Christhesnorlax]

Great job, here's hoping Mythic gets these changes in sometime after release.
(Just trying to be realistic.)

[Gohn]

Originally Posted by NutellaGrande

You can't 180 + instant cast + 180 and keep running.

I think/hope that this is intended. WAR is about RvR and group synergy. If you're a squishy caster/archer and you don't want to get killed, you should have to rely on your healers and tanks and friends to keep you alive while you DPS.

Kiting is not only completely unrealistic (I know, I know, this whole universe is unrealistic...but bear with me here), but it also promotes 1v1 combat rather than RvR in my opinion.

I don't like kiting, and I don't believe it should be possible.

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All that said, I really like your post and most of those findings apply, to a certain extent, to melee classes as well. Good work.

[Desin]

I agree wholeheartedly with the original poster. These things are very annoying, and hurt the feel of combat. The mechanics are great but its so annoying to keep track of what your character is actually doing. The animations don't help at all currently.

[Christhesnorlax]

Originally Posted by Gohn

I think/hope that this is intended. WAR is about RvR and group synergy. If you're a squishy caster/archer and you don't want to get killed, you should have to rely on your healers and tanks and friends to keep you alive while you DPS.

Kiting is not only completely unrealistic (I know, I know, this whole universe is unrealistic...but bear with me here), but it also promotes 1v1 combat rather than RvR in my opinion.

I don't like kiting, and I don't believe it should be possible.

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All that said, I really like your post and most of those findings apply, to a certain extent, to melee classes as well. Good work.

I severely doubt this is intended.
If it was, why would the animations misfire.
Realistically this could go both ways.

[NutellaGrande]

Thanks for the positive input, i want this game to succeed just as much as the next guy.

The only other gripe i had was with projectile speeds, Its fine for some spells to move slow and some animations to move fast, but EVERY animation moves at practically runspeed, including bullets and arrows. Stuff doesn't need to be instant, but I'd really like to see some projectile animations sped up.

This isn't really a bug, so it wasn't listed up there

Ok, i lied,
the second only other gripe i had was not being able to queue up for every tier X scenario from any tier X zone without groupmates in each zone. Thats just plain annoying.

[Agenanmer]

Just something to consider.

Have your combat log open so you are sure spells and attacks are not going off. Those animations can trick ya sometimes. (The numbers which appear over your and your target's head sometimes don't appear instantly either)

Two similar problems which weren't mentioned.

1. Abilities with longer cooldowns sometimes don't show the cooldown on the action bars after they are used. They appear ready like all the other actions especially when using multiple abilities one after another.

2. This one is much more rare but with the bright wizard Flame breath sometimes shows no icon on your target indicating he/she has a dot applied. The combat log shows the attack went off without a hitch but there is nothing under their portrait indicating that they have that dot on them. Flame Breath


I just hope the numbers that showup instantly over everyone and the health bars we DO see on portraits are accurate.
I don't have the patience to adjust to my animations, my opponent animations, the combat log, the portraits that are up, and the numbers popping over everyones head's.

[NutellaGrande]

Originally Posted by Agenanmer

Just something to consider.

Have your combat log open so you are sure spells and attacks are not going off. Those animations can trick ya sometimes. (The numbers which appear over your and your target's head sometimes don't appear instantly either)

Two similar problems which weren't mentioned.

1. Abilities with longer cooldowns sometimes don't show the cooldown on the action bars after they are used. They appear ready like all the other actions especially when using multiple abilities one after another.

2. This one is much more rare but with the bright wizard Flame breath sometimes shows no icon on your target indicating he/she has a dot applied. The combat log shows the attack went off without a hitch but there is nothing under their portrait indicating that they have that dot on them. Flame Breath


I just hope the numbers that showup instantly over everyone and the health bars we DO see on portraits are accurate.
I don't have the patience to adjust to my animations, my opponent animations, the combat log, the portraits that are up, and the numbers popping over everyones head's.

ya shouldn't HAVE to have to read your combat log during combat to know whats going on. If you can't tell whats going on in a fight without reading debuffs and combat logs, your game just went from "fun" to "work"

That said, debuff bars are useful, as are plenty of other things, but 90% of the information should be available through animations and scrolling combat text.