Iscandar
Member
Polearms are some of the strangest and most unpredictable weapons to fight in the game. I believe this is purely because the animations have no smooth transitions, either being incredibly slow or incredibly fast. This has lead to many circumstances where the attacks were nearly impossible to read, leading to my frustration from not being able to react properly to situations where there was conflicting visual and audio information.
Point 1: Polearms have a wickedly fast RtL swing which, combined with tricky to read animations for feinting, make its attacks seem instant and out of nowhere. With two handed swords, you can read feints because the motion significantly involves the whole body. With polearms, the motion is primarily done with the arms, starts soft, then immediately jerks without a visible transition. When a polearm user feints at the beginning of the swing, you often can't tell they're feinting at all - their weapon appears stationary. These instant appearing RtL swings often don't give you enough time to react to position blocks properly as well.
Point 2: With any weapon, it's possible to feint at the last possible moment of a swing. Both weapons will make contact, but the attacker will not trigger the defender's block, and thus will be able to attack again right after. With every other weapon, this is an easy tactic to see through. The force of the blow on the defender will be diminished by having to pull the weapon back and the sound cues for both weapons hitting will be noticeably lighter. With polearms however, both feinted and non-feinted swings appear to arrive at exactly the same amount of force. The sound cues are also deceptive because feinted and non-feinted swings sound nearly the same for a blocked or feint-clashed weapon.
Point 3: Unlike most weapons, the polearm's LtR swing is significantly slower than it's RtL. This attack is so slow that it doesn't look like it's a swing at all, but rather the polearm user purposefully throwing him/herself off balance to be carried by the weight of their weapon. When the attack looks like it should be finished, it's usually still active, and will deal full damage if you run into it. This does not look good aesthetically in a physics based game and is an unnecessarily deceptive attack.
Point 1: Polearms have a wickedly fast RtL swing which, combined with tricky to read animations for feinting, make its attacks seem instant and out of nowhere. With two handed swords, you can read feints because the motion significantly involves the whole body. With polearms, the motion is primarily done with the arms, starts soft, then immediately jerks without a visible transition. When a polearm user feints at the beginning of the swing, you often can't tell they're feinting at all - their weapon appears stationary. These instant appearing RtL swings often don't give you enough time to react to position blocks properly as well.
Point 2: With any weapon, it's possible to feint at the last possible moment of a swing. Both weapons will make contact, but the attacker will not trigger the defender's block, and thus will be able to attack again right after. With every other weapon, this is an easy tactic to see through. The force of the blow on the defender will be diminished by having to pull the weapon back and the sound cues for both weapons hitting will be noticeably lighter. With polearms however, both feinted and non-feinted swings appear to arrive at exactly the same amount of force. The sound cues are also deceptive because feinted and non-feinted swings sound nearly the same for a blocked or feint-clashed weapon.
Point 3: Unlike most weapons, the polearm's LtR swing is significantly slower than it's RtL. This attack is so slow that it doesn't look like it's a swing at all, but rather the polearm user purposefully throwing him/herself off balance to be carried by the weight of their weapon. When the attack looks like it should be finished, it's usually still active, and will deal full damage if you run into it. This does not look good aesthetically in a physics based game and is an unnecessarily deceptive attack.
Solution
The animation of the RtL swing of the polearm should become gradual rather than the current dichotomous split between cocked back or fired. This way its attacks are consistent in appearance and its feints readable. The LtR attack's swing speed should be increased overall so that its animations aren't deceptively slow. These solutions should fix problems with its RtL swings being too difficult to read and its LtR swings looking strange from both a gamplay and aesthetic viewpoint. These solutions should keep polearms as effective as they are now, but more fair to the player's senses by being less deceptive.
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