After looking over the new screenshots, I noticed in a few of the ones taken during combat there seemed to be quite a large amount of effects (glowing slash marks where the wolves were pawing, some sort of smoke and other particle effects in the screenshot with the spider lord) and I was wondering, to what extent will these things be used? If I start as a level one with my rinkydink sword am I going to see all kinds of glowing blade trails, little light explosions when I hit the enemy, and all that other stuff? Or will it be more akin to EQ where melee combat doesn't really have any effects unles you happen to have a flaming sword or something?
You can look at this like the early screen shots with minimaps and stock character graphics. Becuase they are using a pre-built engine, some things like effects and such may be just enabled by default. They may also just be testing different type of effects to see what the engine offers for planning purposes.
My preference is to not have slash effects on melee attacks. For spell casting I absolutely want particle effects showing glowing hands, fireballs, armor forming around PC's, roots grabbing from the ground, etc.
Oh with spells I know there will be many effects, and there should be. But I much prefer the melee combat to have a feeling of realism, where the swing damage is shown in character animation and sound effects where you can "feel" how solid the impact is by the characters animating more violently and the sounds of heavy impact on armor/flesh vs the WoW/Eastern MMO style of numbers exploding on screen and more excessive effects etc. In my opinion when you have alot of these effects on both melee and magic attacks it sortof blurs the line between the two, making the non-magical combat not feel so non-magical, if that makes sense. I feel there should be a distinct difference between the two visually.
I'm sure it's in good hands and in the end will turn out great, but I figured it's something worth discussing anyway.
Both western and eastern styles have their place in the gaming space, but I agree that solid animation and impact sounds are more appealing to me than flashy animations like JRPGs.
I'll use VG as my example, it had great melee comabt actions, putting a bladestaff in the hands of a Disciple and watching them pull off moves was nothing short of god like, But spell effects and actions for casters was a bit lack luster in VG.
I Don't mind if the effects and actions ramp up as you level up, but I really want to go WoW did you see that cool spell i just fired off, look at that fireball go
bigdogchris said:
You can look at this like the early screen shots with minimaps and stock character graphics. Becuase they are using a pre-built engine, some things like effects and such may be just enabled by default. They may also just be testing different type of effects to see what the engine offers for planning purposes.
My preference is to not have slash effects on melee attacks. For spell casting I absolutely want particle effects showing glowing hands, fireballs, armor forming around PC's, roots grabbing from the ground, etc.
Hi bigdogchris,
I need to correct you here. We are using Unity as our engine, but it does not come with any pre-loaded default effects. Everything you see in the game was put in by us, but a lot of it is temporary and used to help us get our systems in place / tested.
Things will change somewhat between now and release, and a lot of the changes will be based on the feedback such as this.
We are all keen on having a minimalistic effects system that matters, so you should have no fear of seeing the game loaded with unnecessary effects.
So the spider screenshot must be new, or I've just missed it this whole time lol.
Either way I don't really see that many special effects that I'd be worried over. Remember that Brad is playing a WarWizard so its both melee and casting, plus he's using a firery avenger so that has its particle effects as well. The wolves slashing seems like it would be fine if its a special attack. Normal melee attacks shouldn't have any effects but I see no reason why some special attacks shouldn't have some sort of flavor to them. Then for the spider, seems he got himself caught in a web and is casting a spell as you can see a red glow from his left hand and the orange/yellow streaks falling to the floor. Again the weapon is giving off its own effects which seem to include some smoke, and the named spider also seems to have some kind of fog enveloping it, but who knows if that is a player cast spell / something the spider did / or just ambient effects for when the spider comes out.
All in all I wouldn't be worried about having to many effects with this team, and have been highly pleased with everything the new site has shown us
Thanks for the reply Sarudan, really glad you guys are heading in a more minimalist direction.(with REGULAR MELEE combat guys, can't make that clear enough, we're not discussing spells/weapons with special enchantments)
Oh and just to be clear I know the screenshots with Brad in it had him with his Fiery Avenger, I meant to say that the screenshots simply started me thinking about this topic, not that the screenshots themselves "had too many particle effects" or something like that.
