Been a long time lurker but now is my time to post something. I want to know how people feel about combat in the game in general.
Personally, after playing close to 50h, I find its lacking something but I cant quite put it into words but Ill try my best:
I find its lacking… impact? Or abilities seem to be missing some kind of ‘‘weight’’ to them. Enemies don’t respond to hits. It feels like you are hitting pieces of cardboard. And its doesn’t feel like I’m hurting things when I use my spells and abilities. They need more, man, its hard to explain but more feedback when you use them? I want to feel the weight of my hits, I want to feel the power of the magic I’m using.
Diablo 3 does this extremely well. Path of Exile also but to a lesser extent, hell, even Grim Dawn with the ragdoll physic feels good.
Are there any plans in the future from the devs to look into that? Its really one of the biggest flaws the game has for me. Everything else feels great but combat is just… bland. And in a game where you spend 99% of your time killing and slashing monsters it would be nice to feel good while doing it.
I don’t know… Maybe its just me but I feel like it would add a TON to the game.
The other thing I don’t like is items only having the possibility of 4 affixes but that’s a whole other story and I think the game is too far in development for this to change.
The combat in LE does feel “smooth”, but lacks “impact”.
For some abilities it does annoy me more than others.
For me personally, it might be a combination of screen shake and audio that is still missing the little bit of extra “oomph”.
Especially skills like “Erasing Strike”, which mechanically feel very good, but the impact doesn’t get transported to me as a player.
Also the general quality of animations could use some love.
All that#s said, i think the devs doing a good job already ov revising older stuff and i think they havn’t done anything to help with this issue in a long time, which means that they probably will do this in the near future.
Yea, the game could use a little more in the way of ‘recoil’ when getting hit. It doesn’t have to mean or do anything mechanically whatsoever, but it makes a big difference visually.
No it’s not only you for sure. It’s hard to put this in words, I agree, but it’s really important. Also it’s hard to give feedback on this since it’s all about the “weight feeling”.
Gonna have to agree with you… It really does seem like the mobs are just walking through hits till they die.
The only instance where i have felt what you are describing is on a high stun build. It stops the mobs in their tracks for a split second/second and the animation is obvious you have “stunned” them.
I have not really noticed anything else that shows the “impact” you are talking to…
Not saying they need to be hindered in their approach to you - i.e. if I hit a mob without any ailment or something to affect their advance, I think something “showing the impact” but not making them stop or change course would be good.
Ahhh yes playing a fist fighter feeling the punch and seeing the enemy explode under my combo was a great thing even for my bayblade build i was feeling the “smooth slicing” going on But in my point of view its all about sound design And thing that shall be added near the end of the beta…
Talking about sound music should be more “diablo like” than “PoE like” this game deserve a better music design and its all about one thing: -Use more guitar !!!
I absolutely agree and feel like this is mostly an audio concern. The audio in the game (at time of writing this) is very basic/underdeveloped for a lot of things, which I think translates to skills being washed out.
That said, I feel like Glacier, the basic mage skill, has a ton of weight to it. I haven’t found anything else that has the same feeling though.
That’s something I like about the music, it’s very ambient at times, but with some powerful moments. It suits the game very well I think. To each his own I guess :).
I really don’t have a problem with the game music, but I agree that the majority of the skills (if not all of them) still lacks impact. The devs are aware of that and making the necessary adjustments (Sarno replied in another post about this subject).
There are some enemies that react to hits. I’m observing this kind of stuff closely because this is one of the few major concerns I had with LE since I started playing.
Imho this is getting better and better. This is not only my personal feeling because I got used to it after playing for a long time. There small steps EHG makes in this regard:
The Rayeh Warriors have ragdoll mechanics
Scorpions react to hits very noticeably
The green blobs die in a slime… blob (?)
Some enemies leave blood splatters when hit
But there still are many enemies that do not react to being hit.
In general the game needs more of the following (repeating myself here over the past months):
Visual hit feedback
Enemies getting a tiny (really tiny so it does only have the smallest possible impact in combat mechanics) recoil
ragdoll physics when enemies get the killing blow This doesn’t have to be a physically correct effect. The ragdoll physics on the Rayeh Warriors are nice, but are too slow for my taste. They need to fall down faster. Actually it looks like these guys don’t weight anything.
Audio feedback on hits
Skill sound (some skills really need to be improved) There need to be some badass sounds!
Impact sound (different sounds for hitting flesh, bones or slime with spells, edged or blunt weapons)
Some games that have had remarkably outstanding sound design in my opinion were Diablo 1 and Guildwars Prophecies. There are some sound I’ll remember my whole life.
Diablo 1 had awesome death sounds on zombies that goatmen and the small ones that always ran away whenever you killed one of their buddies.
While in Guildwsrs the overall sound design (ambiance, music, skills) is my altime favourite, theres one skill sound that’s is absolutely awesome: There was a Ranger skill that reduced the enemies armor and sounded like a heavily distorted version of a huge rusty gate that squeals when you try to open it. Don’t know how to describe it better
Whenever I think about sound design in games I think of these two games as an example of perfection (and I heard those sounds in my head…)
true i noticed the same even tough im pretty sure they plan on fixing this on the way. it would be nice to have more effects on some skills ie: my forge guard exploding forged weapon is barely noticable since it only does a small pop and nothing moves xD
PoE felt terrible in this regard early on and got significantly better over time though it is definitely still not on par with the Diablo games which I feel have the best implementation of this. Not only that, but I feel Diablo always gets the certain thing right that makes their classes feel unique; the Monk in D3 feel punchy and agile, the Barb like a wrecking ball, the Wiz like crackling magic incarnate, etc. D3 has it’s pitfalls but they still nailed combat for me.
I think GD, as a game from another relatively small team, did a great job with their ragdoll physics and getting their combat to a place that felt impactful; it was not there early on either.
I am sure that this is something that will improve with each iteration until there is some kind of general announcement about overall combat improvements as seems to always be the way through EA phases.
I tend to agree with you. It’s not that they feel terrible, but they also don’t have that ‘oomph’ that makes it super satisfying to just slay hordes of enemies.
