Skeletons army animation

[Elerond]

If there need to be any effect/animation when summons disappear, I would say that but cloud of disappearing mist or smoke where summons are to show that soul power that manifested summons has become part of cycle yet again.

 

But I am not sure that even such simple animation can be added in this point of time, but maybe content patch or expansion could add such if you feel to give it a try.

[Stun]

Most summons in at least BG actually has a little spell-effect when they unsummon,

Not really, unless by "little animation" you mean "they just disappeared with a brief sound effect and a message in the combat log saying: X unsummoned".

 

 

Enough of this. Look at the stream. Look at how flashy the skeleton summon graphic is. What do you guys want? Consistency? Do you want them to disappear with the same graphical pomp and flourish? Because anything less (ie. a 1-second puff of smoke) will look just as out of place and 'lacking' and the same people who complained then will complain again.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Stun

[Stun]

But I am not sure that even such simple animation can be added in this point of time,

It can't, and they wouldn't do it even if it could, because it would be a waste of resources. We're not talking about sword swings, or death, or anything so common. We're talking about an animation that will only ever be seen after every single one of the following conditions are met:

 

1) There is a chanter.

2) that chanter has the skeleton summoning chant, and employs it.

3) the skeleton survives for the duration of the spell.

 

This is not skyrim. The devs here do not have 5 years and $100 million in funding to spend on unique animations that most players will never see.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Stun

[Osvir]

Hear that devs? All of 4 people on this thread have professed their wishes for you to... halt the bug-squashing process and go back to designing new animations for this one Chanter invocation.

 

So get to it! March 26th is just a month away!

Depends on what the crowd at Pax South were "boo-ing" at too, Stun. Because the Skeletons weren't permanent or because they disappeared in a blink when combat ended?

[Stun]

Or because the demonstration was over?

[Mazisky]

Well, stop discuss. Disappearing characters are cool cause they bring that IE old flavour. Why don't make the whole game  8 bit, would be really much better, u know, old flavour

[Elerond]

 

But I am not sure that even such simple animation can be added in this point of time,

It can't, and they wouldn't do it even if it could, because it would be a waste of resources. We're not talking about sword swings, or death, or anything so common. We're talking about an animation that will only ever be seen after every single one of the following conditions are met:

 

1) There is a chanter.

2) that chanter has the skeleton summoning chant, and employs it.

3) the skeleton survives for the duration of the spell.

 

This is not skyrim. The devs here do not have 5 years and $100 million in funding to spend on unique animations that most players will never see.

 

 

Chanter's have multiple summoning spells, not just skeletons and all summonings are until end of combat or dead (previously they were until dead or rest) . Making summons disappear with fading cloud of mist/smoke effect is not unique animation, but quite generic animation that should be quite easy to scale to size of summoning. 

 

Would such effects be waste of resources is purely question of preferences, but as general rule visual feedback is not waste of resources, but also it is not usually highest priority for resources either.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Elerond

[Osvir]

Or because the demonstration was over?

That was the "Aaaw" a couple of seconds later.

[Stun]

Well, stop discuss. Disappearing characters are cool cause they bring that IE old flavour. Why don't make the whole game  8 bit, would be really much better, u know, old flavour

Straw man.

 

Summons are not characters; we are not discussing graphic technology; and the "coolness" or lack thereof is not the reason why I'm against the spell/chant being changed from how it currently is.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Stun

[Luckmann]

Straw man.

 

[...]

 

Pot, kettle, etc.

[Mazisky]

 

Well, stop discuss. Disappearing characters are cool cause they bring that IE old flavour. Why don't make the whole game  8 bit, would be really much better, u know, old flavour

Straw man.

 

Summons are not characters; we are not discussing graphic technology; and the "coolness" or lack thereof is not the reason why I'm against the spell/chant being changed from how it currently is.

 

 

Yeah, cause u saw a lot of summoners in your life you can say how they  should be showed. 

Edited February 21, 2015 by Mazisky

[Stun]

What?

[Jobby]

I would also like to see some kind of transition between "summoned" and "un-summomed" other than instantaneous disappearance, by your logic surely the act of summoning should just make them appear in one frame? 

Again nothing fancy, re-use of the death animation for skeletons would be fine, a fade would be fine, or a burst of fancy colours and **** would be fine. I really don't care what the effect is as long as it's there.

 

Not a deal-breaker, not gonna make me cry myself to sleep, nor will I forsake Obsidian studios and consider them forever more as my own personal Judas'. It's just that the implementation in that video looks somewhat unpolished and amateurish which doesn't befit a game displaying such wonderful artwork, character models and animations.

[Diogenes]

It would be cool to have an animation or a spell effect when your skellies get un-summoned. How is this a controversial topic?

[Luckmann]

It would be cool to have an animation or a spell effect when your skellies get un-summoned. How is this a controversial topic?

It's really not. Of course summons shouldn't simply disappear from one split-second to the next.

[Bobby Null]

This is on our list of polish issues/bugs. Jorge and I discussed this (I think it was last week) and I asked him to look into an existing animation mixed with an existing visual effect to handle summoned creatures despawning. He then went and talked with David S, one of our programmers and came up with a solution. I'll be honest, I haven't seen the final result but I'll follow up on Monday and see how it looks. 

[Mazisky]

Nice to read that.

PoE is such an awesome game we are waiting for and the attention for little details is the final touch 

 

Gj guys

[bigsun123]

Regarding IE games, I'm playing through BG again right now with Tutu installed and when skeletons are unsummoned, a flash of light occurs.  I tried to find a video but no luck as they last for 8 hours in the original games.

 

@Bobby Null, I mentioned this in a previous topic as well but it never got looked at as far as I'm aware.

 

In these videos of higher level abilities, some of which include summoning various beasts to fight for you (Note: SPOILERS for those of you that don't want to see the spells)

 

 

SPOILERS:  It's around 15:28 in the video posted

 

One of the issues I saw was that a character would summon a creature, kill something rather quickly, and try to move to another battle before combat ends, mostly because if combat ends before the duration of the summon expires, the summon would disappear.  This seems like it's really discouraging and forces you to plow through as many enemies as quickly as possible so that your awesome spells don't go to waste.

 

Would it be possible to extend combat as long as the summons/buffs are active?  I'm not sure how this would affect saving but it would help reduce the frantic pace I saw there and the confusion and frustration when your buffs and summons suddenly run out without warning before you encounter the next enemy.  This is another issue where a notification of the creature being unsummoned would be helpful.

Edited February 23, 2015 by bigsun123

[Voss]

Unfortunately the tiny durations and combat only stuff seems to be a deliberate design decision, so I wouldn't expect things to change. I'm not quite sure of the logic behind pulling from the 4th edition D&D playbook of 'when faced with a design decision, do whatever is easier' for combat/noncombat abilities (otherwise known as 'just say no') when trying to ape older and more complex RPGs, but it is pretty embedded in the game's design now. 

 

It is rather a shame, as a lot of otherwise interesting abilities become trap options when they can only be used x/day and in practice will only last a few seconds.  The chanter's summons do avoid the x/day trap, but have the problem of build up- by the time you can cast something amazing, there may not be enough combat left to utilize it.  By contrast the cipher excels at the combat design presented- the pool resets automagically between combats, so is always ready to go with no limits at all.  They can fall apart in long fights with lots of enemies, but the classes that can continually bring their A-game to each and every fight seem a lot more useful than the fire and forget shulbs.  

[bigsun123]

I'm not quite sure of the logic behind pulling from the 4th edition D&D playbook of 'when faced with a design decision, do whatever is easier' for combat/noncombat abilities (otherwise known as 'just say no') when trying to ape older and more complex RPGs, but it is pretty embedded in the game's design now.

I can understand making the duration shorter, but in the video above there is no duration listed, it just stops when combat is over, which is hard to plan for in advance.  I really don't like the arbitrary system of determining things based on the combat status, but it sounds like that's a problem with the engine and how they've programmed the game.  It's come up in combat start issues with combat only modals, affected save game bugs, and this mentioned issue.

 

I imagine it's too late to change now but frankly I think abilities per encounter could be replaced with a cool down for the same effect.  If I have an ability that I can only use once per battle, and there's a couple fights spread out on a map, what counts as a battle?  As soon as all enemies in an area are dead?  5 seconds after?  If I run into another encounter while the combat state is on then I don't get to use that ability again, and I have no way of knowing when the arbitrary combat state is about to end.  Cool downs were not a part of the IE games but many special abilities such as the Kensai's Kai, Inquisitor's True Sight and other figher high level abilities essentially gave you per encounter abilities by giving you 10ish per rest, which is more than you'll ever need.  If I can only use an Arcane Veil once an hour or minute or whatever I can plan how fast I go through accordingly.  I do agree with you though, it seems like a lot of decisions are made based on limitations of the engine rather than gameplay, which is frustrating.

 

[Jarmo]

 

I imagine it's too late to change now but frankly I think abilities per encounter could be replaced with a cool down for the same effect.  If I have an ability that I can only use once per battle, and there's a couple fights spread out on a map, what counts as a battle?  As soon as all enemies in an area are dead?  5 seconds after?  If I run into another encounter while the combat state is on then I don't get to use that ability again, and I have no way of knowing when the arbitrary combat state is about to end.  

 

 

Well yeah. But then you get a choir of MMO Mechanic! Burn with fire! Burn! RAH RAH RAH!

And then you get one guy telling you it wasnt so in BG2 so it MUST NOT BE!

And then the discussion is already beyond help...

[bigsun123]

 

 

I imagine it's too late to change now but frankly I think abilities per encounter could be replaced with a cool down for the same effect.  If I have an ability that I can only use once per battle, and there's a couple fights spread out on a map, what counts as a battle?  As soon as all enemies in an area are dead?  5 seconds after?  If I run into another encounter while the combat state is on then I don't get to use that ability again, and I have no way of knowing when the arbitrary combat state is about to end.  

 

 

Well yeah. But then you get a choir of MMO Mechanic! Burn with fire! Burn! RAH RAH RAH!

And then you get one guy telling you it wasnt so in BG2 so it MUST NOT BE!

And then the discussion is already beyond help...

 

yeah, I mean I'm on the same page as many of the traditionalists for many dead horse topics (combat xp, light prebuffing, etc) but in this case it's a design choice that promotes better planning and strategy in real time games, which is the end goal of the combat.  I haven't played many MOBA style games but they were designed from the ground up for balanced, team based, real time game play, instead of bandaging a turn based, pen and paper system to allow it to hobble into a digital realm.  It stands to reason that some of those mechanics could be useful in another team based, real time game that strives for balanced combat.    

[Luckmann]

I imagine it's too late to change now but frankly I think abilities per encounter could be replaced with a cool down for the same effect.  If I have an ability that I can only use once per battle, and there's a couple fights spread out on a map, what counts as a battle?  As soon as all enemies in an area are dead?  5 seconds after?  If I run into another encounter while the combat state is on then I don't get to use that ability again, and I have no way of knowing when the arbitrary combat state is about to end.

It's obvious you haven't played the beta or checked out any of the preview videos, but it's fairly obvious when combat starts and ends. As long as you are engaged in combat, it counts as one encounter. If you are still engaging one group of enemies and run into another group of enemies, that's still just one encounter.

 

Encounters end as soon as the last enemy is dead.

 

Well yeah. But then you get a choir of MMO Mechanic! Burn with fire! Burn! RAH RAH RAH!

And then you get one guy telling you it wasnt so in BG2 so it MUST NOT BE!

And then the discussion is already beyond help...

1. Could you be any more strawman?
2. BG2 also did not have any per-encounter abilities. In BG2, everything is per-rest or per-day.

[DarkWanderer]

IMHO the skeletons should have animation when appearing either as they're coming out from the ground or the bones are assembling together with some light orb coming inside of them symbolising the soul put into them, and the animation at the end, as the bones just fall on the floor. As far as "realism" goes - the skeletons can't/shouldn't be "summoned" (even if the spell description say so), but "animated" (the necromancer or other magic user are putting the soul into the bones) and as far as i know it also corresponds to PoE lore. "Summoned" can be creatures that lives in another plane (unless the spellcaster has a skeletons army in his cellar and is "warping" them into the battlefield. Well, at least i see it that way ...

[Voss]

 I do agree with you though, it seems like a lot of decisions are made based on limitations of the engine rather than gameplay, which is frustrating.

 

 

I actually wasn't suggesting engine limitations were the issue, but rather design decisions- particularly no lingering buffs or summons.  [if they've somehow lost the ability to hire people who can program duration based effects rather than combat only effects, that is just...weird]. But that decision (and the healing model)  interacts badly with the traditional D&D model they're deliberately trying to imitate which leaves the cleric, druid and wizard on weird ground where entire playstyles are just destroyed, not from engine limits, but from the knock on effects of design decisions.  Meanwhile the chanter and cipher are fine tuned to exploit the living hell out of long and short fights respectively. 

 

Which then creates further knock on effects where the small number of companions might have fantastic stories (or not) but be utterly useless classes that don't interact well with design decisions.  Or be a fantastic class that doesn't have a companion representing it.  Either can severely impact replayability and enjoyment of the game. I don't want to spoil anything, but I can already tell I don't want to take at least two companions because they have crappy classes, and I don't know how many of the remaining six are Jaheiras or Khalids with severe personality problems that I just don't want to deal with.  Or how many of the six will be must haves due to placement or sheer usefulness of their classes.