Oct
15

Dear Flying Labs…

…please watch sword fighting scenes from Princess Bride or Pirates of the Burning Sea before you even attempt this. I’m sure your changes are nice, but if you can’t recreate the “dance” that is swash-buckling sword play, then don’t waste your time with a re-vamp.

D out.

Posted in Editorial
6 Comments Posted by Darren

6 Responses to "Dear Flying Labs…"

Hudson says:

October 15, 2008 at 11:57 am

Weird. I just commented over on my page how I blogged about playing this game: TWICE. Over that fast. Haven’t been following it since the server merges.
Sente says:

October 15, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Heh, I recently picked up the game to play the free trial.

They certainly need to work on the animations and the interaction. The feature list presented at the link does not really say if they will do anything about that. Ypu are quite right in that they might not be addressing the major “fun” issue here.
p@tsh@t says:

October 15, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Don’t get me started. There’s a beautiful game in there if they’d only let it out. Continuing epic fail.
Theresa says:

October 15, 2008 at 7:08 pm

Hi!

I saw this page in my Google Alerts and can’t resist posting because I’m chatty. Did you know we watched The Princess Bride for our last “movie night” get together?

The Massively article is great, though it leaves out that the animations are being updated along with everything else. Here’s a bit from the beginning of the devlog from Kevin.

“At the same time, most of the content team has been doing the same for the avatar missions; the animation team has been revising all the swordfighting animations; the UI team has been revising the UI and the particle effects; and the sound team has been iterating all the sounds of avatar combat.”

No one outside of FLS has seen the changes we’re working on yet. If you’re interested in the changes, hang tight and you’ll see them in an upcoming build.

We’re always listening to the gaming community and our players, so if you ever have any ideas or thoughts to share we love to hear them.

<3,

Theresa
DamianoV says:

October 16, 2008 at 8:07 am

Random thoughts:

I have to admit, I’m intrigued by the direction they are trying to move, and have always liked the ideas behind the initiative and balance concepts (tho not the specific current implementations of them). Of course, anything that goes beyond (or better yet, replaces) hit points and stamina points gets a hopeful glance out of me… I can be _so_ predictable.

Glad to see/hear the avatar animations are getting some work, of course. The game that epitomizes smooth combat animation to me has always been CoH/CoV, but there are plenty of good examples out there… hopefully given SoE support/ownership it’s not necessary to (re-)build completely from scratch.

Another thought for the devs: play some D+D 4e. Lots of movement built right into the powers/techniques/skills, might be inspiring on some level…
Aaron says:

October 17, 2008 at 3:47 pm

As I responded at Massively:

The avatar combat system didn’t merely need retooling, it needed to be replaced entirely (at least, when I played it, about the time of the game’s release). That system single-handedly destroyed all interest I had in that game. It was ridiculously boring.

The best swordplay system I’ve ever seen was in Assassin’s Creed. That sort of system can’t be replicated in a latency-vulnerable MMO, but Flying Labs should use it as inspiration.