Recovery Times' Effect on Combat Speed

[Quillon]

I've always felt recovery time in PoE is an artificial way to balance combat in a real time(with pause) computer game, its just a period of inaction tied to other variables which doesn't seem appealing for starters. It also helps reduce simultaneous actions at any given time which actually supposed to help coping with combat. But does it really achieve that purpose?

 

Why has most people been using slow mode in PoE? Is it to see what the characters are doing more easily or for less simultaneous actions happening with increased recovery time in slow mode? Maybe both but for me the former is the purpose of activating slow mode.

 

I didn't think of this much before, I just wasn't liking "artificial inaction for gameplay purposes" but when I saw Josh's twitter post recently it hit me that recovery time's existence may be the problem all along that people have been calling combat in PoE a clusterf*** etc.

 

* we're going to try a global reduction in combat movement speed internally to see how that affects the feeling of combat. we may also experiment with a global increase to recovery times. unfortunately, lagufaeth are just really dang fast.

 

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/931612193036017664

 

I think the problem is fast movement & animation speeds so removing recovery times and adding that time to animation speeds/slowing them down should solve it. As an example, Dragon Age Origins doesn't have recovery times and has slower animations, running speed etc. and combat never felt confusing in that game. Anyway, I may be wrong or this could be too fundamental part of PoE that couldn't be changed anyway. Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[Katarack21]

Always hated recovery time. It sucks just sitting there watching my guy not doing anything.

[draego]

Yes i misunderstood what you wrote. must have been to early 

Edited November 18, 2017 by draego

[Katarack21]

I actually play on fast. Slow mode bugs the holy crap out of me for some reason.

[Quillon]

I actually disagree somewhat. Yes the recovery thing should help but i have the same issue when i play RTS games. The older RTS have a slow down button and i use that for the same reason i want it here to give myself more time to pause to fix an issue when i see one. I remember when i got Starcraft 2 and I felt i couldnt slow the game down enough and felt more overwhelmed. Now RTS i get are different because you sometime have to look over large area and multiple bases but the principle is the same. Not saying i absolutely need it but slow mode was definitely the way i played POE1. It lets me feel like i am taking in all the action but i couldn't tell you the exact sweet spot but POE1 was close enough. Now some of that is spell based stuff from enemies so maybe the slower casting times (recovery) help with this also so you could be right.

 

Not sure you understood what I said or I understand what you're saying Recovery is the period where characters do nothing in between actions, I'm saying that time could be added to animations(making animations slower) and recovery could be removed altogether.

[morhilane]

I think recovery was added to slow down combat and balance what was supposedly hard hitting abilities/weapons originally.

 

What I'm seeing right now is that the original issue of combat speed was neither of these things and all recovery did was hide the real issues.

 

Removing graze (well it's optional now) slowed down combat, you die a lot less fast now (well unless focus fired by 10 mobs which is totally possible in the beta because of over populated encounters). The problem was always that everything scored a hits too often, even if reduced in damage (which made players focus on hording deflection and damage multipliers). Now that we all miss more (enemies too), the recovery time is painfully long after a miss...and you miss 50% of the time.

 

The Merc Priest using a crossbow doesn't seems to do anything else but recovery + reload when I'm looking at him...and then his shot misses. Yeah!

 

Not sure you understood what I said or I understand what you're saying Recovery is the period where characters do nothing in between actions, I'm saying that time could be added to animations(making animations slower) and recovery could be removed altogether.

I would keep a 0.5 second recovery, otherwise some animation transition would look weird and you would end up cancelling actions all the time when re-positioning.

Edited November 18, 2017 by morhilane

[Quillon]

I would keep a 0.5 second recovery, otherwise some animation transition would look weird and you would end up cancelling actions all the time when re-positioning.

Sure, a minimum fixed downtime should be required as long as dex, armor type etc effects animation speed only.

 

 

The Merc Priest using a crossbow doesn't seems to do anything else but recovery + reload when I'm looking at him...and then his shot misses. Yeah!

Haven't they said they added recovery time of crossbows' to their reloading animation a few months ago? Isn't that so in the game?

Edited November 18, 2017 by Quillon

[morhilane]

 

The Merc Priest using a crossbow doesn't seems to do anything else but recovery + reload when I'm looking at him...and then his shot misses. Yeah!

Haven't they said they added recovery time of crossbows' to their reloading animation a few months ago? Isn't that so in the game?

 

Yes (just tested it), when it is crossbow -> reload, but the priest tend to go with crossbow -> spell -> recovery -> reload -> crossbow.

Edited November 18, 2017 by morhilane

[Archaven]

 

I actually disagree somewhat. Yes the recovery thing should help but i have the same issue when i play RTS games. The older RTS have a slow down button and i use that for the same reason i want it here to give myself more time to pause to fix an issue when i see one. I remember when i got Starcraft 2 and I felt i couldnt slow the game down enough and felt more overwhelmed. Now RTS i get are different because you sometime have to look over large area and multiple bases but the principle is the same. Not saying i absolutely need it but slow mode was definitely the way i played POE1. It lets me feel like i am taking in all the action but i couldn't tell you the exact sweet spot but POE1 was close enough. Now some of that is spell based stuff from enemies so maybe the slower casting times (recovery) help with this also so you could be right.

 

Not sure you understood what I said or I understand what you're saying Recovery is the period where characters do nothing in between actions, I'm saying that time could be added to animations(making animations slower) and recovery could be removed altogether.

 

 

I suspect they wanted faster animation so that it's more appealing to "wider" audience. Basically, i have an idea in my mind about a fast paced RTwP system but the way it was presented in Pillars i think they couldn't get it right.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Archaven

[Enduin]

I think a mixed approach may be best. In DAO the slower animations were quite odd and unnatural for larger weapons. Swinging a giant two handed sword in real life isn't some slow process, it takes a bit to build momentum but once that's done that sword is really cruising, not languishing through the air the whole time like you're in slow-mo. But it is a viable way to handle balancing without using arbitrary wait times between attacks like PoE does. 

 

To mitigate that unnatural aspect of slowed animations it might be worthwhile to then just employ both methods to reduce the weirdness of both. Have both slower animation speeds but also have some shortened Recovery periods in between. By doing that you can have slower animations that aren't so unnaturally slow and also have recovery times that don't need to be so long and artificial with characters just standing there doing nothing. 

 

Otherwise if you cut out recovery times and try to avoid painfully slow attack animations you'll need to rework the whole damage system to account for far more attacks per second and how that then translates to damage output or misses. Which in itself could be a huge problem that weakens player experience if people feel they are doing too little damage with each strike or simply missing too much altogether. A problem you kind of see in DA2 and DAI where enemies feel like absolute sponges because every character class attacks at a fast pace, but ultimately doesn't really deliver very much damage with any one strike.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Enduin

[Quillon]

Yeah, I agree about DAO's two handeds, rest was okayish tho.

 

 

To mitigate that unnatural aspect of slowed animations it might be worthwhile to then just employ both methods to reduce the weirdness of both. Have both slower animation speeds but also have some shortened Recovery periods in between. By doing that you can have slower animations that aren't so unnaturally slow and also have recovery times that don't need to be so long and artificial with characters just standing there doing nothing. 

 

Yeah this may be the ideal solution. Where ever possible time should be taken from recovery to animation without making the animation slow-mo like they did with merging xbows' recovery with reloading. Recovery is just so unnatural, it just bugs me too much; now in Deadfire some evading moves etc helps with that inaction period but more could be done; f.i. instead of waiting out 3 secs recovery then shooting an arrow in an instant, animation time could be longer on drawing and shooting...and most other anims could be a bit slower I guess.

 

And I already expressed this in other threads before but recovery period could also use some flavor animations: pseudo defensive stances/taunts/wiping away sweat/holding onto wounds if hp is low etc.

[cheesevillain]

I've always felt recovery time in PoE is an artificial way to balance combat in a real time(with pause) computer game, its just a period of inaction tied to other variables which doesn't seem appealing for starters. It also helps reduce simultaneous actions at any given time which actually supposed to help coping with combat. But does it really achieve that purpose?

 

 

It'd feel really weird if guns and crossbows didn't have it. They're not modern semi-automatics.

[Quillon]

 

I've always felt recovery time in PoE is an artificial way to balance combat in a real time(with pause) computer game, its just a period of inaction tied to other variables which doesn't seem appealing for starters. It also helps reduce simultaneous actions at any given time which actually supposed to help coping with combat. But does it really achieve that purpose?

 

 

It'd feel really weird if guns and crossbows didn't have it. They're not modern semi-automatics.

 

 

Just merge recovery with reload like they did already, why would it be weird?

[cheesevillain]

 

 

It'd feel really weird if guns and crossbows didn't have it. They're not modern semi-automatics.

 

 

Just merge recovery with reload like they did already, why would it be weird?

 

 

 

I misread your question.

[draego]

They are changing combat by making recovery longer for melee and shorter for spells. 

 

Combat move speed is also being reduced.

Edited December 1, 2017 by draego