Goodbye AC2, we hardly played you.

[MahrinSkel]

Edit: Oh MTV2.  Do they still show videos there, or has it become as disfunctional and irrelevant as its parent?

It's just as bad, reality TV overload.  They made MTV Hits and MTV Jams in order to have someplace to actually show videos outside of TRL, but they're slowly infilftrating those with "Making The Video", "Cribs", and other crap.

--Dave

[Murgos]

They don't have to pay the artists to show cribs, they do if they want to show videos.

[Shockeye]

Edit: Oh MTV2.  Do they still show videos there, or has it become as disfunctional and irrelevant as its parent?

It's just as bad, reality TV overload.  They made MTV Hits and MTV Jams in order to have someplace to actually show videos outside of TRL, but they're slowly infilftrating those with "Making The Video", "Cribs", and other crap.

You're so hip!

[squirrel]

The combat for WoW and AC2 are both pretty similar, you are right. You attack pretty fast, enemies attack pretty fast, and the animation typically has little to do with what is happening. In addition, your character and the enemy don't seem to interact at all. They just face each other and dance around.

That's opposed to say FFXI, where your character and the enemy attack much slower. When the enemy hits you you can be knocked back and vice-versa. The sounds effects match the animation as does the actual damage.r.

So you never got knocked down, stunned, backstabbed, shield bashed or hit with any other of the kind of cool pve mob attacks in WoW? You have played it right? I didn't play AC2, but what you described was DAoC PvE, not WoW.

[Hoax]

I never experienced the fear that even a mid range mob in FFXI (like pugils with screwdriver or the bats with their aoe silence) in WoW.  Now I did not do very much raiding at all and I have heard what a solid challenge raiding can be but basic mobs never did anything immpressive.  You couple that with needing to setup a group makeup (class, weapons, spells) renkei and leveling in FFXI was really fun and interesting except for the fact that the grind was awful and getting items was damn near immpossible.  Oh yeah and having to level up 2+ times through the newbie shit was weak.

[Margalis]

So you never got knocked down, stunned, backstabbed, shield bashed or hit with any other of the kind of cool pve mob attacks in WoW? You have played it right? I didn't play AC2, but what you described was DAoC PvE, not WoW.

Ok, you guys have some sort of reading comprehension problem.

I'm saying FFXI LOOKS AND FEELS better. Whether it is better is another story. In FFXI when you swing your sword and hit something it looks like you swung your sword and hit something. In WoW the fighting looks like you waving your arms around and the opponent waving it's mouth or claws or whatever, accompanied by some totally innapropriate "donk" sound effect.

In AC2 when you fight is basically looks like you opponent is spasming wildly and you are taking damage for some reason. WoW definitely feels that way to a lesser extent. WoW looks like stage-fighting at best.

That isn't to say WoW is a bad game. The fighting just feels bad, like it does in most games.

The fact that I quit WoW at level 18 means what? That you have to grind to level 40 to have combat not look retarded? Combat in FFXI looks good at level 1. Just look at say a Mithra Monk. She has 3 or 4 different attack animations that are all very well done, different looking, and have some oomph. You can actually watch and see jab, jab, uppercut, reverse. WoW looks like flailing, sword-fighting for ten-year-olds.

Does your basic attack animation magically improve at level 60? I doubt it. I don't think it is a stretch at all to say that FFXI has FAR better attack animations for both characters and enemies.

[Strazos]

Too bad it takes 5 minutes to kill a single mob.

[Margalis]

Once again, learn to read. Apples and oranges.

This is where all the WoW fans come out and say "omg, FF has Tarus! That's gay!" Great. That's not what I'm talking about.

[Llava]

I have almost no knowledge of FF

With that in mind, I can say that the combat animations in WoW have ALWAYS irritated me.  When I started the open beta, the look of the combat completely turned me off the game.  It looked kinda like Warcraft combat has always looked- two things stand next to each other and swing their weapons, one eventually dies.  Of course, it was better than that, but not by that much.

Later on when I picked it up to join some friends and made my way to 41, I still felt it was crappy looking combat.  I also felt that my character was ugly as hell and the game gave me no options to achieve the look I was going for, though that's unrelated.

The combat itself was actually fairly fun, but watching it wasn't.  I never felt the urge to take a screenshot of combat.  I never saw myself or anyone else do something and think "Woah, that was awesome."  Hell, even some of the combat animations in DAoC did that for me.  It's unfortunate that in such a stylized world with so much personality that the fighting lacks any distinctive style or personality of its own.  Other than flailing.

Tarus are pretty gay.  I like Elves and I think Tarus are gay.

[Strazos]

I really don't understand your argument.

My character in WoW swings a weapon, or casts a spell, and I do damage to the mob, or some other effect.

My character in FFXI swings a weapon, or casts a spell, and I do damage to the mob, or some other effect.

I don't see how one is "Oh that's gay, it doesn't look like anything is happening" and the other is "That looks so cool."

Whenever I watch FFXI high-end combat, all I ever see is people standing around, and an occasional weapon swing.

[Rasix]

Once again, learn to read. Apples and oranges.

So why bring it up? People here will debate the merits of peeling an orange before eating it and how that peeling adds to the overall experience of eating the orange. Some people won't like oranges at all and find it silly that you even brought it up in a thread about apples.  Some people will argue that even though you were just pointing out the benefits of orange peeling, by bringing it up, you bring oranges themselves into the conversation.

Anyhow, shampoo is better.

[stray]

I wish I knew enough about mmo combat mechanics to articulate more here, but I don't. I will say however that I'm not talking about the flailing animations so much as I am the general pace of WoW and AC2. Mainly with WoW Rogues. Mages and Warriors feel nothing like AC2 combat though. Paladins do, to a certain, slower extent, but that's about it. I could be wrong, but it seemed like AC2 was going for a Diablo-ish/Dungeon Siege type feel (at least it seemed so to me), where autoattack is like the bread and butter that binds everything -- Which, in turn, may be why I may see some similarities with WoW, a Blizzard game (though, admittedly, WoW combat slowly becomes more interesting than that past the early levels).

On a sidenote: I get a chuckle when I hear people call the WoW rogue a "micromanager's dream class". Obviously, they've never played CoH or Shadowbane (not that I don't like how Rogues play out, but geez..).

[Llava]

On a sidenote: I get a chuckle when I hear people call the WoW rogue a "micromanager's dream class". Obviously, they've never played CoH or Shadowbane (not that I don't like how Rogues play out, but geez..).

People call it that?

Try playing a Death Nova/Animate Bone Minions Necromancer on Guild Wars.  THAT'S micromanagement.

As for the argument-

I'm not sure how to articulate it.  It was something that bothered me from the very beginning of the game, though.  I think it was largely Sinister Stab that did it.  It looked more like my arm was spasming than me actually hitting the enemy.  A lot of the animations in WoW have that "not quite right" look to them.  In the long run it doesn't really matter (hell, I played to 41 didn't I?) but it turned me off at the beginning.  I couldn't follow the combat by looking at it.  Lots of stuff happening, but it was hard to sort out what was actually an attack.  Also, wtf was with the slow motion animation when you miss?  I just didn't like how the combat LOOKED.

What defines that difference?  <shrug> Stylish maneuvers, for one.  Most stylish thing my rogue ever did was spin around once and thrust his dagger in a downward motion.  And he did that for just about every special attack, except Sinister Stab (I can't remember anymore, is it Sinister Stab or Sinister Strike?) for which he would use a sort of "I'm swatting a fly, ignore the dagger in my hand" motion.

[Kairos]

Don't you need an EXACT number of friends? I forget the group sizes in FFXI, but from what I remember it was pretty fucking easy to get left behind.

If your friends plus one random dude filling in for you grind on those sand worms for 4 or 5 hours, it's not like you can just jump right back in with them and be merry and gay. You'll have to find some people to grind fucking sand worms for 4 or 5 hours before you can even regroup with those people.

Pretty much, yeah. The thing is, if you've got a set group, you don't play unless everyone is there. If anyone is missing, you find something else to do (play a different job, for example). FFXI is pretty fucking brutal about level differences in groups, which is probably one of the worst things about it. Anyone even a level behind the highest leveled person in the group takes a decent exp hit. Two levels behind is absolutely ridiculous, on the level of 35-40% exp lost.

Group size is 6 people, by the way. My current set at the moment is me and three friends. We just pick up a couple of mooks to fill it out, and it works out pretty well.

On a sidenote: I get a chuckle when I hear people call the WoW rogue a "micromanager's dream class". Obviously, they've never played CoH or Shadowbane (not that I don't like how Rogues play out, but geez..).

Hah! I played a rogue to 60 in WoW. That's one of the most absurd statements I've read... today.

[Sobelius]

CoH had combat animations I liked. Especially jump kick -- I took it only for the animation just so my ice/energy blaster could look cool as she kicked the shit out of some punk then froze his ass.

Buit after a while, I find all eye candy goes stale. I then start asking if what I'm *doing* is enjoyable. No matter how much I liked jump kick, it couldn't keep me from feeling that CoH got "grindy".

[Margalis]

I really don't understand your argument.

My character in WoW swings a weapon, or casts a spell, and I do damage to the mob, or some other effect.

My character in FFXI swings a weapon, or casts a spell, and I do damage to the mob, or some other effect.

Compare a well-animated 2d game like Street Fighter 3 to Time Killers, or a well animated 3D game like Wind-Waker to some budget 3D game. You could make the same argument - "I do a kick/swing my sword, opponent takes damage!"

In FFXI if you are a smallish character like a Mithra using a 2 handed axe it looks like you are a small character with a big axe. All the swiings are very large and loopy, and the axe looks liike it has real momentum. If you are a martial artist, your moves look crisp and they correspond to actual martial arts moves - a punch, a reverse, a Thai-style leg kick, a side kick, etc. Most of the attacks are animated in a faily realistic (but stylized) manner. Similarly, if an enemy like a liizard uses an attack like his lunging headbutt you'll see his whole body coil up and compact and then quickly unwind. It's just well done overall.

You know how bad CGI/computer animation looks like all the weights and momentums are wrong? That's what I see in WoW. Everything just looks off. It looks like people's limbs and weapons weigh nothing, their bodies have no momentum or inertia, etc. It just looks very fake and make-believe.

And I'm not talking about high-level combat here. I'm talking about any combat. In FFXI just start a level 1 character, equip a two handed axe, and go fight some bats or something and you'll see what I mean.

---

A lot of MMORPGs suffer from this problem. AC2 has it in spades. Anarchy Online was pretty bad that way as well, as the damage you took and gave didn't seem to synch up with the animation at all.

From a design perspective, it's sort of the difference between:

"Ok, this enemy has a claw attack, a bite, and a body check - let's animate those all and figure out how much it uses each one."

vs.

"Ok, this eenemy attacks once every 2 seconds for an average of 26 damage - ok, um, we need to animate that or something"

[Strazos]

Maybe it was a problem with the other WoW races, but whenever my two toons were swinging weapons, it looked fine to me. My warrior almost looked like she had trouble with big two-handers.

Though it may have to do with the fact that most of my toons in WoW were female. The male animations may have been a lot more over-wrought.

[squirrel]

So you never got knocked down, stunned, backstabbed, shield bashed or hit with any other of the kind of cool pve mob attacks in WoW? You have played it right? I didn't play AC2, but what you described was DAoC PvE, not WoW.

Ok, you guys have some sort of reading comprehension problem.

I'm saying FFXI LOOKS AND FEELS better. Whether it is better is another story.

And perhaps you have some sort of problem distinguishing your opinion from fact. You say FFXI LOOKS AND FEELS better. I say it doesn't. You haven't presented any objective argument other than 'i say so, in WoW characters flail around.' Ok. Whatever.

[schild]

My first complaint minutes into the beta was that the WoW combat system was boring as shit to watch. I still stand by that. It looked like crap. Still did at retail, imho. Hell, EQ2 looks and feels better.

[Fabricated]

I think we're forgetting that FFXI was a really bad game.

[stray]

Well, even though the animation stuff isn't part of my point, I'm going to side with Margalis a bit. He already spoke about melee, so I'll just mention Hunters here.

Roll up a Tauren or Dwarf hunter, log in, and start shooting things. Look at the proof yourself...We don't need to have a freaking message board debate about it. Unless your mind is warped by only having mmog's, nobody should have to "prove" anything to you. Shooting looks as lame as it did in AO -- And by that I mean that your toon won't even be pointing at the mob when it fires off a rifle! Compare it with, say, a 3rd person single player shooting game like Socom, and try to tell me it looks like I'm actually shooting something. Even SWG, at the very least, did better in this area.

Anyways, whether FFXI's animations are superior, I don't know. I don't remember enough about it. But as far as measuring it up against action games in general, hell yeah it's sloppy.

[Jain Zar]

I think we're forgetting that FFXI was a really bad game.

Really bad is giving it too much credit.

Its McQuaid era Everquest for the anime kids. 

[Strazos]

Oh I think it is much worse than that.

I actually played EQ way back then, somewhere between the Velious and Luclin expansions, and it was possible to actually have fun in it.

Granted, it was my first MMG, but still....

[WindupAtheist]

I'd have been tickled if WoW had realized that when a blow strikes home, it's momentum ought to terminate.  My paladin was constantly swinging his hammer through things, not against them, and the only way to tell a hit from a miss was to see if numbers sprang up.

[Nija]

Who gives a shit about auto attack animations? No animation will make autoattack fun. It's the first thing I forget and definately not the first thing I notice.

Now, AC2 had great DEATH animations. The lugian animation where they slump forward onto their knees and fall over is outstanding, and probably the most satisfactory kill-shot death anim from a mmorpg yet.

It could only be better if it was coupled with the UO death .wav.

[Llava]

We're not just talking about autoattack.  I'm talking about all the attack animations in WoW.  My Rogue had, I think, two animations different from autoattack.  A spin/downward thrust and a flyswatter-smack.  That's it.  Pretty lame.  Not fun to watch.

Also, there's something to be said for being able to watch a fight and know what's going on as opposed to watching the stats flying by in the chat box.

[Miasma]

The only fun I ever had in FFXI was growing plants in my apartment and harvesting them.  And that was not much fun.

I quit when it dawned on me that every level you gain adds a couple thousand more xp you need to get for the next level, but the amount of xp you gain always stays the same, an even con solo always gave 100 points.  I did a little math and figured out how many foozles I would have to whack at higher levels and promptly unsubscribed.  Oh, and I could never find that ghoul in the desert to enable my subclass.

And what was with that terrible interface you had to go through just to play the damn game?  I don't want to check email and friends from your buggy, slow, and just terrible little app.  I think the install required three different keys for three different programs to finally play.

Having half of the people running around being Japanese was kind of interesting though.

[Rasix]

We're not just talking about autoattack.  I'm talking about all the attack animations in WoW.  My Rogue had, I think, two animations different from autoattack.  A spin/downward thrust and a flyswatter-smack.  That's it.  Pretty lame.  Not fun to watch.

Seeing 5 animations 20000 times v. 10 animations 20000 (lowball estimate) times doesn't really mean a hell of a lot.  Anyhow, it's funny, on my priest I just notices there's like 3 different swings for my staff on autoattack.  Never noticed after 160+ levels in the game.

Also, there's something to be said for being able to watch a fight and know what's going on as opposed to watching the stats flying by in the chat box.

I can watch a duel in WoW and tell what spells they're using based on animations, effects and spell/ability colors.  I think in every game (mmorpg) I've played there's enough visual cues that you can tell the flow of a fight without looking at a combat log.  Rogues had a lot of aural cues.  One of the most ingrained sounds in my brain is the sound of a rogue's Cheap Shot.  I can pick that out in the middle of a heated battle without fail.

Anyhow, really, is this what you're looking for in a game?  Some little anime pug-human hybrid swinging a large axe and it feeling just like you hoped it would?   We're doomed.

[Nija]

For the record, the cheap shot sound is one of the most satisfying sounds in a mmorpg yet.

la la, leveling on birds in azshara, no cares in the worl... *CRUNCH* Holy shit what was that? oh I'm dead.

[Llava]

Anyhow, really, is this what you're looking for in a game?  Some little anime pug-human hybrid swinging a large axe and it feeling just like you hoped it would?   We're doomed.

I'm not defending FF.  As I said in my initial post on this subject, I've seen it played once and wasn't particularly impressed.  By all accounts it's an awful game and I'm thankful to have never played it.

But given the choice between watching a fight in WoW or watching a fight in CoH, I'd pick CoH.  I can recognize what's happening easily, just looking at it.  Hell, at least in DAoC I can watch a fight and tell what styles are being used, if not how much damage is being inflicted.

WoW's combat lacks impact.  It's something that bothered me from the very instant I started fighting in that game, and clearly my opinion isn't unfounded because I've got two other people here agreeing with me.  I'm willing to bet there are at least two or three more people out there who agree with us.

[Nija]

But given the choice between watching a fight in WoW or watching a fight in CoH, I'd pick CoH.  I can recognize what's happening easily, just looking at it.

Of course you'd be able to tell what's going on in a CoH fight. A shaman in WoW has more totems than CoH players have offensive skills.

[MahrinSkel]

It says something that the farewell to AC2 turned into a gripefest about combat systems in general in less than a page.  This is how a world ends, not with a bang, or even a whimper, but with a collective "Meh" and a shrug.

--Dave

[Alkiera]

But given the choice between watching a fight in WoW or watching a fight in CoH, I'd pick CoH.  I can recognize what's happening easily, just looking at it.

Of course you'd be able to tell what's going on in a CoH fight. A shaman in WoW has more totems than CoH players have offensive skills.

Found a list of totems, and Shaman spells online.  13 totems + 9 spells, compares pretty closely to the 24 power picks of a CoH defender.  3 damage spells, a root, a dispell, and one damaging totem, vs. the 9 possible attacks in the defender secondary, and then power pools.  Outside of totems, they have 2 party buffs, 1 self buff, and a heal/regen spell.  Again, compare to the 9 powers in the buff/debuff pool, + power pools like Leadership.

My scrapper has 5 attacks with his broadsword, as I didn't take all of the powers from that set.  They all have different animations.  My buffs all have animations that can be seen, so someone with some experience, just looking at me, can tell that I am /invuln, and which of the invuln powers I have up.  When I attack, they can tell which attacks I'm using, just by watching the animations.

In WoW, there is a lot of random whackety-whackety, and many of the special attacks don't appear terribly different from those random auto-attack animations... or at least, didn't when I played in beta.  And they are an ideal case, where they are typically constantly using different special attacks to build up points for finishing moves.  Other classes with less offensive specialty, like paladins, spend most of any given fight just doing auto-attack, with the odd heal or seal activation.

In short, autoattack sux.  That is all.

Alkiera

[Numtini]

I don't really care about the animations, but for actual play, one of AC2s worst features was that the "special attacks" were pretty much worthless--at least when it was at its highest number of players in beta. You autoattacked and it didn't do much. Then you got your flash, pressed the button and it died. It didn't matter what class you were, that was pretty much it. Unless you never got the flash, then it killed you. Whether you mashed your specials and in what order didn't matter at all, the only thing was hitting one after that flash.

FFXI has renkei. It has the EQ-esque class synergy thing (aka forced grouping). WOW has all the different specials. Some classes dot, others have instants, fighters, mages, and thieves generate energy differently. But no matter what, you feel like you're actually doing something. AC2 seemed to be the ultimate bot game to me. Just create something that sees the "i'm vulnerable" flash and triggers the special attack and that's it. Maybe it got better, but they lost people before that.

[AOFanboi]

This is where they make the client, server, and devkit available to the public. Seriously. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

The only major game I know of where the devs have said "we give up, here, do something with it plz" is Microsoft's Allegiance multiplayer space combat game. It's doubtful Turbine will be releasing any of their IP, they still make games probably using much of the same tech, while Allegiance was the start and end of one product line.