Auto Attack melee animation interferes with backwards movement

Title: Auto Attack melee animation interferes with backwards movement
Reproduction Rate: 100%
Blocker? No
Details:

• While the "Auto Attack" is engaged, the attack animation constantly pulls your character towards the opponent.
• I presume this is meant to ensure you are the proper distance away to engage the enemy, so that's fine.
• However, if you attempt to back away from the enemy, the animation will pull you forward again.
• 
  
• It is possible to turn off the "Auto Attack" and back away, so not a huge issue.
• Just bringing the issue to your attention in case it is unintended.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Enter combat
2. Engage the "Auto Attack"
3. Use the "S" (back) key to back up from your opponent
4. Observe how each time the attack animation fires, your character moves forward automatically.

User Specs:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz (8) System RAM: 8110
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU RAM: 4007
SotA.EarlyAccess.Win.64.447.Date.07.26.16
Area: Novia_R1_Swamp01_01
Loc: (-139.0, 18.4, -61.9)

 

This is behaving as intended, currently.

 

Understood that it is as intended ..... However: If you are backing away from the enemy, you are not trying to attack him at that moment. You are trying to get into a better position or get away, depending on the circumstances. The avatar by lunging forward is doing the opposite of what the player intends. That makes this a major problem which should be re-classified as a bug, and corrected.

 

I agree. If this is operating as intended, then the intention is misguided IMO. For example, when using a polearm with range capability, moving back brings more targets in range. If you auto attack three opponents with the present intended design, you cannot hit the three opponents because you are too close to the middle mob in many cases. @Attenwood

 

Plus the fact that the current leaping, lunging, gyrating avatar animations while in auto-attack make effective combat almost completely impossible. Those are not needed and did not used to be here. If those have to be retained, we need to have an options checkbox to turn them off.

To put it most simply: This really, really needs fixing.

 

I'm experiencing this too. Please let the back (S) button disable the lunging forward, or at least if auto attack is meant to keep the avatar close enough to the enemy, to allow avatar to pull back the max distance his weapon allows. No point equiping a two handed weapon if auto attack puts you in the face of the enemy.

 

Moving to the Feedback forum for further review.

 

Yeah, it's hard to imagine, if you (Portalarium developers) really understood this bug, how you would ever call this working as intended.
No other game in the history of all games I've ever played works like this. It's terrible, right now, and every person I would ever show this to would agree it's broken.

 

This "intended feature" is making auto-attack almost useless for me. This was never a problem in past releases. But in R32 as soon as I try to back away I lunge back forward again. This has caused me many deaths.

Another bad auto-attack feature is that it keeps being disabled as soon as I sheathe my weapon to recover from a battle.

 

I quite enjoy the lunging attacks. If you don't want to lunge, turn off auto attack before you back pedal or double tap S. Makes combat more exciting. Ive seen complaining about the reticle being used to aim now this. Kind of makes me wonder how boring combat was before the changes. Also without those features botting seems more likely to go on.

 

Yes, it sure is exciting to lose control of your character and get face planted into walls in enclosed areas. What a rush!

 

I realize the devs have a lot on their plate, but one would think a properly functioning auto-attack would defer to my manual assertion of control when I press a key to move backwards. As Dariog mentions, it's problem for pole-arm users trying to position themselves via mobs. We're trying to back up but get bolted past them. It isn't even aesthetic.

I doubt it would be difficult to from a programming perspective to check if the player is backing up before it conducts an auto-attack.

For that matter it also seems to interfere with my ability to tab to the next target, since next target ignores what is BEHIND me. I can be fighting a group, lurch on top of them, putting them technically behind me.

 

--- Bug reports repeatedly reclassified as "Feedback".
--- Deafening silence from the developers on this topic.
--- And nothing addressing the problem in the current patch.

I don't know what else to say.

 

-- No a bug because it is working as designed, nothing is broken and unusable (no bug exists)
-- Silence from the devs because, well its feedback and not broken
-- Not a problem. YOu can work around this issue by turning off auto attack when its time to run away. Or you can turn your back to the mobs and move in the direction you wanted to move.

I don't know if things will change, but that's a design issue that needs to be reviewed by the devs in due time.

 

Turning your back to the mobs drastically increases their chance to crit you, and allows them to do bonus damage.
Your glyphs also cause lunging and exposing your back to the enemy as well, turning random directions, and is generally a nuisance to play.

Currently the best plan is to level on greens and low yellows in mass than it is to solo fight orange and red one at a time.
This allows you to ignore most combat tactic hinderances placed in the game and just play the darn game.

I think the big problem is Devs play new features for minutes at a time, and go "yup that works and it is cool", they've got lots of stuff to do and don't really have time to play the game like we do.
But actually leveling up a characters is hours and hours and hours of combat, and all these features that are cool on paper, in a demo, or in a duel, are really annoying to put up with for days and days of combat.

Otherwise we would have never ended up with such a hodge podge of combat features, that makes SotA the most clunkly combat interface in any MMO.
It's the biggest reason reviews are not impressed with 3 years of development, it's the reason prime time has less than a thousand concurrent users, it's the reason steam reviews are bad.
End of the Day, Combat (the way we level) is the most critical aspect of any MMO, everything else is simply something to be messing around with while your taking a break from leveling your char.

We should never get easy mode /stick in combat, and auto-attack should have never invented a crappy partial implementation of it.
I hate having to wrestle control of my character from the game. If you want to play my char.. you play it I'll go watch a movie.

I'm not saying that everything about SotA combat sucks.
I really do like the Deck Draw system, I think it would be improved if duplicate glyphs autostacked and only combo's needed manual intervention, or if Stacked glphs had more effect than they do.
Right now it seems the oppurtunity costs of stacking glyphs far outweights the benefits, unless your doing it before the fight starts to stack an opener, or your out of focus and have nothing better to do.

In the End, the conflict should be fighting the Mobs for victory, but for us the conflict is fighting the game interface to do what we want.

That's my biggest pet peeve.. They do all this stuff to make the game immersive, yet they put in multiple combat system that actively fights against immersion. Where the actual Interface is the biggest hinderance to a successful battle.

 

Just imo, turning on the auto attack every single time I engage in battle is not only tiring, but not fun. Why is there no option to just leave auto attack on? It's a very standard feature in games the past few decades. I already have to sheathe my weapon after every single battle. I think that's enough. Pushing more keys to just start and finish battle is not fun for me. How about making the attacks and spells more visually pleasing/engaging. That's where the real fun of battles are..in my opinion. This automatic moving/jerking around of my avatar because of the auto attack issues just makes combat frustrating.

 

Adding my feedback that the lunging is ridiculous. I took polearms specifically because I like the idea of keeping things at range and hitting multiple targets at once. This mechanic is now taking that away from me. Not being able to position myself how I want to in combat is the opposite of fun and immersive.