"Beastmoon or Normal Play" Spell Animations?

[AluraMist]

Russell Hughes posted this on the social media site. He is responsible for Spell Animations, and he is asking for feedback.

Russell Hughes
·1h

Those that have played Beastmoon in Wizard101. Which do you like the pacing/speed of the spells better in?

* Beastmoon or
* Normal Play

@Sparck @Eric Stormbringer @Ratbeard --- just an fyi.

[Sierra SeaSong]

I honesty do not understand the question? Many BM spells are very slow to cast causing needless lost time in mayhem? Not sure how bm vs non bm spells are any different speed wise tbh.

Maybe someone can clarify exactly what they are asking us here?

[AluraMist]

I honesty do not understand the question? Many BM spells are very slow to cast causing needless lost time in mayhem? Not sure how bm vs non bm spells are any different speed wise tbh.
Maybe someone can clarify exactly what they are asking us here?

The way that I see it, the Beastmoon pace is faster, where the original Normal Play Spells are slower (ex: AoE Animations). That's just my opinion. Would like to hear how other understand this. ??

AluraMist

[WarWeaver]

Um, is anyone else confused by this question or is it just me?

[Pegasus Unbound]

I really can't vote either way because it is like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, both are fruit/spells but they are completely different after that one similarity.

In Beastmoon, especially Mayhem as an example, a MAJOR issue is the over-abundant spamming of DOT (Damage over time) or HOT (Healing over time) spells. They chew up so much vital time that they can lose an entire game on a REGULAR basis; keep in mind that Mayhem is entirely a time sensitive event where I have lost many, MANY games because of that last 3 seconds used up by the DOT/HOT or other very lengthy spell animations.

The time factor I mentioned doesn't really become as critical in "normal play" except to say that you want to get it over with and move on to the next one; as such you can see how trying to compare the 2 just doesn't make any sense.

If you REALLY want to improve them, treat them each as a separate "fruit" and make appropriate adjustments/changes accordingly.


Now, if you will excuse me, Mayhem is calling...

[edward sky]

Like Pegasus above, I believe they shouldn't be compared, at least NOT with the assumed intention to influence the other.

Beastmoon I find can be too slow and dragged on, as mentioned the DOT/HOTS take up alot of playtime to see them take effect, honestly the combat of beastmoon is what keeps me away entirely.

Normal play, I'm happy with the improvements on speeding up aoe/other spells we've had so far and hope they keep coming, not every spell needs to be instantaneous but quicker sure. If anything maybe we could simplify the display of DOT/HOTs for both game modes? Though they're less likely spammed in normal play I could see it benefit both.

Unsure of my answer until they maybe give us a bit more of an example of what they're asking us to give, but if solely my preference, of course I prefer normal play.

[Ravino.]

The question is asking about something the devs often refer to as "spell truncation", it's a feature in beastmoon where half of spells' animation doesn't play. As you might have noticed at one point, spells usually have two portions of animation: there's a "summoning" animation where the creature or event appears, then a pause to display and count hanging effects, and then an "attack" animation where the spell deals damage; some spells also have an "exit" animation played afterwards.

In Beastmoon events, most of these animations are cut off to save time - more often than not we're left with only the "attack" animation. In example, a truncated Wraith will jump right to its draining animation, skipping its lengthy intro of ghostly fog and rising gravestones.

It's a very helpful thing in Beastmoon where players and creatures spend half of their turns casting attacks, though it's not something I wanna see in regular gameplay. For one, we don't spend nearly as many round casting attacks - but more importantly, applying this in PvE would cut off many cool and interesting animations and incite players into bulling others to turn on the feature so they can get done faster, the same as what happened with Pirate101's "fast combat" albeit with much less justification.

And for what? All KI would really gain is a brief thumb-ups for "giving what the players want" before we resume complaining it's not fast enough.

I don't think it's a bad thing they're exploring the idea, I'm all for speeding up combat but I don't want to see it done in a cheap and artifical way. There're better ways to speed up and diversify combat than to trim down animation: shortening aoe's, giving creatures "wand spells" like they've done in Lemuria or even reworking their AI so they use more buffs - but cutting spell animations in half feels rather detrimental in a card game where said these animations are the core of the fantasy.

~R

[sparkyflamefire]

Not exactly what you're asking about, but since you're the guy to talk to about spell animations...

I think it was when Karamelle came out (2 years ago), KI started reworking AOE spells so that the animation would hit all the enemies at the same time instead of having to sit through the same animation 4 times. Big timewaster in Beastmoon, especially in Mayhem. KI started with "the most commonly used spells" first. But other than those first few spells, no other spells have been similarly updated. Is this something we can hope to see anytime soon? After all, its been almost 2 years. Or has KI decided not to update any other spells?

[Willowdreamer]

Not exactly what you're asking about, but since you're the guy to talk to about spell animations...

I think it was when Karamelle came out (2 years ago), KI started reworking AOE spells so that the animation would hit all the enemies at the same time instead of having to sit through the same animation 4 times. Big timewaster in Beastmoon, especially in Mayhem. KI started with "the most commonly used spells" first. But other than those first few spells, no other spells have been similarly updated. Is this something we can hope to see anytime soon? After all, its been almost 2 years. Or has KI decided not to update any other spells?

Speaking of speeding up spell animations, what about the Fishing spells and how long it takes to actually bring the fish up to the Wizard when it's caught? Now THAT definitely needs less animation time.



ON TOPIC: I think that there are still many spells that need to be sped up or shortened. I don't really do Beastmoon, but if the reports of omitted animations are correct, then that probably should be the way to go in general. I hate to say that because in the early years of the game, I really enjoyed watching spell animations and thinking about the hard working designers and programmers who gave such enjoyment. Now the game feels like there simply isn't time to watch these things over and over and over again because players have identified a uniform strategy to get through battles quickly. It's only when I am able to solo that I take the time to use obscure spells for my own enjoyment.