Exanima Arena (retry and controls)

[Bakkeby]

I'm pretty new to Exanima and I wanted to share some of my first hand experiences with the arena.

Combat is difficult to get a good handle on and naturally needs practice to master. This also means that you'll die a lot in the beginning until you get the grip of it.

The arena is an obvious training ground to master combat. If you die you currently have to press escape, click new game, next and create character which can get tedious. My recommendation would be to have a retry / restart option if you die in the arena (that simply reuses your previous character options, which are remembered anyway on the character creation page).

It's been discussed many times before on this forum, but feedback is feedback so I wanted to say that I find the controls pretty unintuitive regarding the way it is always in relation to the character and the direction he/she is facing.

Don't get me wrong, it works rather well if you get used to it, but if you end up with the enemy being between you and the camera then the buttons are essentially reversed (click the right key to move to the left on the screen, click up (away from the enemy) to engage it, that is, if we think of the buttons as arrows or north, west, south, east). I think because of this people are compensating by hitting space to correct the camera so that the controls feels more natural again.

Also if you happen to move while doing a huge swing with your weapon then you can quite easily end up in a drunken stumble that looks and feels ridiculous (and was probably not intentional).

I think it would be really good if there was an option to allow the WASD keys to control the character in relation to the camera and let players choose the style that works best for them.

 

[Murf]

Yes already been discussed and addressed but I wanted to add this regarding your comment about what happens if you move during attack. That may be part of the reason you, and others are having problems with the combat. Moving during the attack is another method to give your attacks variety and more importantly, force. If you move correctly during the attack, you will add to the force of the attack. If you move incorrectly then you will stumble. As far as what is 'moving correctly' means, the easiest way to explain is this; what would happen in real life if you were to swing one way and then move? Would the momentum of your attack be hindered or helped by the movement of your body. Physics based combat system is going to take some practice. Lots of practice.