The Lowered Action Speed Is The Least Of Our Problems

[mr. brj]

First of all, two small disclaimers: I don’t consider listing every single point I disagree with regarding a design choice to be constructive feedback, but since us forum users were asked to make specific points for these matters, I doubt any other form of feedback will be sufficient for voicing my concerns.

Also, I’m saying this especially to the modders of the community: suggestions and corrections from anyone who can read the game’s code better than me is deeply appreciated and will be edited into this post if necessary. If I make an incorrect statement, please excuse my lack of knowledge on the technical details, I’m just a guy who is good at maths and finds joy in experimenting with stuff.

Understanding the Action Speed

Spoiler

So let’s talk about action and attack speeds. From what I understand, the game uses the duration for each animation to determine how long an action is supposed to last. I’m also pretty sure that the game actually has very clearly defined values on the intended duration for each of the combat actions and some additional actions, which are basically achieved by setting a minimum limit on the number of the client (?) ticks per action. For most actions, there is a “pre-animation” and a “post-animation”, meaning that an action may consist of multiple animations, and that there will be a pause time between them if the minimal limit of that action’s duration has not passed yet. This pause is, in practice, achieved by literally pausing the pre-animation if it was faster than intended, or by adding an idle state after the post-animation if the whole turned out to be “faster” than intended. This topic doesn’t end here of course, but for now, this summary should provide you with the necessary details.

All that said, there are apparently reasons that cause the player actions to deviate from the intended values, which is the actual issue here. I don’t believe that attack and action speeds getting slower was an intentional decision, but it was rather a side effect of the latest update which is (intentionally) not getting addressed because of the amount of work it would require to create a long-term solution as opposed to a short term “band-aid fix”. More on this topic later.

Inconsistent Attack Speed

Spoiler

Note that this isn’t a new issue by any means. For example, the inconsistency of the attack speed has been a known issue in a small part of the community for quite some time now. I uneducatedly suspect that it has got to do with the client-server communication along with the minimal amount of time the attack animations are hardcoded to last, but since there has been no feedback on the bug reports on this matter, I think we will just have to wait for someone with the necessary coding skills to pinpoint the exact issue. In the mean time, take this guesswork with a grain of salt.

Before the latest update, sometimes, there used to be a single frame of the idle animation between looping attack animations which actually didn’t correspond to the intended attack speed and caused the inconsistency. Please note that while an idle frame is expected between loops if the whole animation is rushing ahead, the case I’m explaining here is for situations where the added frame actually makes the whole attack chain slower.

As of the latest update, the whole attack animation loop always gets another additional frame in between, however the previous inconsistency is still present. I don’t know whether it’s the pause between pre- and post- animations or it’s an additional frame of the idle animation, however, it is one of these two. While the inconsistency between a single attack chain is intended to keep the attack speed (and therefore the DPS of the character) within a looping animation consistent, the inconsistency of the attack speed a.k.a. the additional frames between separate attack chains is definitely not. Switching shards does influence this inconsistency, but it can still spontaneously occur within a single shard.

Lowered Action Speed

Spoiler

Now, on the topic of the speeds of other actions. My guess would be that if the combat actions now get another additional frame between the animations, then this should also be the case for all the other actions with looping animations. However, I will be completely honest here and say that I haven’t done my research on this matter prior to the update, I only know that it’s slower now. From what I understand, and I might be wrong here, harvesting actions solely rely on the duration of their animations, and unlike combat actions, they don’t have a minimum frame limit on how long they are supposed to last. So it is harder for someone like me who can just test out the “clues” they find in the game’s code to understand what works as intended in such cases and what doesn’t.

Initial Attack Not Connecting

Spoiler

Another issue that has been present in the game (and that has been much more noticeable ever since, I believe, some time after the March QoL and before the May combat targeting beta) is the initial attack not connecting at all. I think this is a much more noticeable bug for anyone who regularly plays the game. Ever realized that sometimes the character, instead of attacking, just does a half “whoosh” sound without landing a hit when first approaching a mob? I believe this is the case because from what I observe, the attack action starts from somewhere in the middle of the animation instead of its first frame, which, in the end, doesn’t count as an attack. And this can happen to any initial attack that is not part of a looping animation, meaning that unless you are tanking and continuously attacking a mob, the first hit of each kiting pattern might miss. Especially with kiting mobs like pigmen, missing the initial hit usually translates into missing the consecutive hits unless you are hugging the mob.

 

Why These Issues Are Relevant

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Now that we have a more clear insight on how the actions work in DST, let’s talk about why issues regarding them should be relevant topics.

Inconsistent attack speed: This might seem as a minor inconvenience that only experienced players seem to notice at first, but this is only an irrelevant part of the matter. An experienced player with good observation skills will be able to handle situations where the inconsistent attack speed becomes a problem either way, but a clunky behavior is a clunky behavior in the end. It limits further design options, is frustrating for newer or experienced players alike, and most importantly, it is not fun to deal with at all. The range of the impact of this issue in the gameplay starts from having to pay more attention to barely noticeable details, reaching all the way to the result of a fight being decided not by skill, but rather by the amount of armor a player has at their disposal. 

Since I stated design options as a relevant point, I believe I should also provide an example. Think of the Dragonfly, one of the better designed bosses in DST. She has the unique ability to attack while moving, and if you ever fought her in her enraged form, you will know that you have to pay more attention to her actual movements as opposed to the hits you were able to land in between, just because you can never count on the consistency of the attack speed. Even with much forgiving damage and health values, and even with a design that requires much less of a skill cap, designing another interesting mob with mechanics similar to the enraged Dragonfly becomes a hassle just because of having no control over how the average player would be able to fight it. Fixing the inconsistency of player attacks, while still making the kiting pattern hard, would let an average player figure everything out on their own through trial and error because of the indirect lack of unpredictability in the design. 

Reduced action speed: DST might be a game where one of its main appeals is its replayability, however that replayability still takes a good amount of time. Not everyone has the luxury of sitting back and spending hours in front of a video game, and I would guess that even for those that do, seeing a repetitive action getting slower will not improve anyone’s gaming experience, and on the contrary, it will gradually turn the appeal of replayability into a state of unnecessary repetitiveness. I’m not talking about saving or wasting time measured in mere seconds here, and I’m not accounting for players that haven’t realized a difference. I’m talking about how discouraging it can be to play the game just because a repetitive but (questionably) decently paced action now feels like a roadblock on the overall enjoyability of a new world, directly hurting the appeal of replayability.

This is all dependent on an individual’s relative scale of judgment of course, however, just because it’s relative doesn’t change the fact that this is discouraging to a part of the existing playerbase. We all use references to compare one thing with another, so seeing the game getting into a more repetitive state than before is going to make the experience more discouraging and even boring to some. And knowing that a better alternative existed before doesn’t help in this situation at all.

Initial attack not connecting: Now this is the most frustrating issue in my opinion. It directly affects the flow of the gameplay, and even when one accounts for it, there is close to nothing they can do about it. Missed an attack on an aggressive pigman even though you timed everything right? Too bad, wait for it to run back to you and hope the same doesn’t happen again. Missed an attack on a Bishop? Too bad, you will have to get hit once more. Missed an attack on the Dragonfly? Too bad, hope you were counting the seconds and not the amount of hits, because otherwise you won’t be able to kite properly and most likely will get hit every time this happens.

All of this is just extremely tedious, not only because of the issue’s unpredictability, but also because of the lack of options one has when this happens. It’s simultaneously a time waste and a test of patience and anger management, and I seriously hope it gets addressed as soon as possible.

 

Final Suggestion

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Now, as a conclusion, what do I have to suggest apart from these issues getting addressed in one way or another? I want to make a bold statement, so deepest apologies to Klei if this comes out too harsh. I think that the priority of the updates needs a better evaluation process that consider their impacts on the gameplay.

In the latest update, we lost the ability for automatic fast harvesting, and also got a decreased action time. In return, we got the actual update, an improved client prediction. The number of players that actually used client prediction is irrelevant at this point, however, I still fail to see how this an overall improvement on the player experience. The majority of the active playerbase seems to be either indifferent towards the update and its side effects, or overall dissatisfied. And there is no telling whether the playerbase who isn’t active is aware of the changes at all. In the end, I believe all the fuss surrounding this situation was avoidable in the first place.

Was it a good decision for Klei to polish the client prediction at this time? Who am I to know, I’m not working in the video game industry so I can’t see the bigger picture here. Were the slowed-down action speeds predictable before this update got into production? Again, I don’t know, but let’s assume they weren’t. Were the problems I mentioned above already present in the game? Apart from the decrease in all action speeds, they were. Were these problems relevant at all? In my opinion yes and some might say no, however they were definitely more relevant than the problems related to client prediction in terms of player experience. So was it a good decision, specifically in terms of player experience, to polish the client prediction before addressing these problems, which somehow got into a worse state than they were before? Absolutely not.

We have had similar cases with other updates, but I don’t want to make this post any longer, so I will discuss the most extreme scenario we have had. Remember the stunlock overhaul after Wanda’s introduction? The decision itself was fairly understandable, however it caused the Ancient Guardian fight to be in a terrible state for over 6 months. Half a year might be a negligible amount of time for the developer team to push an update live, however I doubt this is the case for any consumer who anticipates that update. Had the fight gotten reworked sooner, had the removal of the stunlock mechanic gotten delayed for later, or had the Ancient Guardian been added into the list of mobs that weren’t immune to stunlock, the terrible state of the Ancient Guardian fight wouldn’t have been the case at all. But none of these happened, and because of a long-term design choice us players weren’t even aware of, the gameplay experience of a part of the playerbase got in the crossfire.

Such situations are avoidable by simply prioritizing the order of updates that have a certain impact on the game, and this is what I’m criticizing here. This pattern still seems to be present, and even though my guess is that the slowed-down action speed wasn’t anticipated by the developer team during the production process, the situation still shows that certain updates must have a higher priority. I’m also guessing that the staff is unwilling to address the issues discussed here, because a long-term solution to them requires much more time and resources, and that the team would rather have a long-term solution instead of a band-aid fix. So at this point, I can only ask the developer team to highly prioritize this issue in the upcoming updates. I don’t know how long it will take, but I know that the longer it takes for the issues mentioned here to get addressed, the less motivated I will be to play the game. And I know for a fact that there are others who feel the same way.

Thanks for your time and I hope I was able to voice my concerns here while making valid points in the issues I believe are relevant.

[. . .]

I agree

[00petar00]

There is only going to be a big pushback from the players as soon as they notice changes and they get used to any issues that stay in the game long enough.

Animation cancelling is not the biggest problem with DST but it is still not a good change and players don't want to see the game become worse when it is supposed to be improved with updates.

This isn't a change where people are split %/% (for and against) but %/% (indifferent and against) but I do understand that this was an unintended change and it is possible for developers to add animation cancelling with proper code in the future, hopefully soon.

Inconsistent attack speed is what I would want to be a priority, it just makes fighting much more difficult than it needs to be, Instead of counting hits you land on a boss before you need to kite, it is preferable to count the time until their next attack or look for animation of their attack.

It seems to me that bugs get fixed or there are changes made to the game before there is proper code to not make the game less enjoyable like stunlock overhaul, why did we need to wait for so long before AG got reworked, why didn't stunlock changes happen after AG rework? Band-aid fix isn't a bad solution when it is only going to be used until they have time to make proper changes.

Why part of this update wasn't delayed until there was animation cancelling coded into the game? I understand that there is a pressure to update the game on a regular basis but I don't agree with the idea that the game must be updated just for there to be an update for players even if it makes the gameplay worse. 

[mr. brj]

45 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

There is only going to be a big pushback from the players as soon as they notice changes and they get used to any issues that stay in the game long enough.

Animation cancelling is not the biggest problem with DST but it is still not a good change and players don't want to see the game become worse when it is supposed to be improved with updates.

This isn't a change where people are split %/% (for and against) but %/% (indifferent and against) but I do understand that this was an unintended change and it is possible for developers to add animation cancelling with proper code in the future, hopefully soon.

Inconsistent attack speed is what I would want to be a priority, it just makes fighting much more difficult than it needs to be, Instead of counting hits you land on a boss before you need to kite, it is preferable to count the time until their next attack or look for animation of their attack.

It seems to me that bugs get fixed or there are changes made to the game before there is proper code to not make the game less enjoyable like stunlock overhaul, why did we need to wait for so long before AG got reworked, why didn't stunlock changes happen after AG rework? Band-aid fix isn't a bad solution when it is only going to be used until they have time to make proper changes.

Why part of this update wasn't delayed until there was animation cancelling coded into the game? I understand that there is a pressure to update the game on a regular basis but I don't agree with the idea that the game must be updated just for there to be an update for players even if it makes the gameplay worse. 

Never once had I mentioned anything about animation canceling in my post, but the rest of the points you made I agree with. I suspect that in the latest updates, the developer team has been aiming for creating a polished code that will consistently work in the future, and if this is indeed the case, I fully support it. My biggest wish then would be that the actions of the player, especially the combat actions, get a higher priority in the to-do list instead of the semi- or non-relevant issues in the game. I believe that creating a well-thought order for the upcoming updates will be sufficient towards creating much less controversy between parts of the playerbase and have a non-negative impact on the gameplay experience at the same time.

[00petar00]

@mr. brj

I should have said both animation cancelling and lowered action speed, they are both not good for the game and it happened in the same update.

That is what I believe they are doing, polishing the code but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be band-aid like fixes so that players don't have bad experience like you mentioned with AG.

Sometimes update shouldn't go from beta to live if there are game breaking problems. There was attack delay bug last year and game wasn't even playable as it took almost a second to respond after pressing F for it to attack.

Klei should be more willing to delay an update or ask for help like they did recently for beta testing or even outright revert update that went live if it has a very negative impact on gameplay until they can patch the bugs.

 

[mr. brj]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

@mr. brj

I should have said both animation cancelling and lowered action speed, they are both not good for the game and it happened in the same update.

That is what I believe they are doing, polishing the code but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be band-aid like fixes so that players don't have bad experience like you mentioned with AG.

Sometimes update shouldn't go from beta to live if there are game breaking problems. There was attack delay bug last year and game wasn't even playable as it took almost a second to respond after pressing F for it to attack.

Klei should be more willing to delay an update or ask for help like they did recently for beta testing or even outright revert update that went live if it has a very negative impact on gameplay until they can patch the bugs.

 

My thoughts exactly. Plus fun fact I didn't mention in the post because I have no solid proof for it: the initial attack not connecting has been an issue ever since that very same attack delay bug has been fixed. I don't know whether those two are related, but they should definitely deserve the same attention.

[mr. brj]

Small addition to the lowered attack speed for all the Wanda players out there. If you get the slower variant of the inconsistent attack speed, you can't guarantee the additional scale drop from the Dragonfly anymore.

Edit: Now that I've tested a bit more, forget the scale, I've even had instances where the giant bug wouldn't even get stunned at all.

[Yuuko]

7 hours ago, mr. brj said:

Small addition to the lowered attack speed for all the Wanda players out there. If you get the slower variant of the inconsistent attack speed, you can't guarantee the additional scale drop from the Dragonfly anymore.

Wolfgang too.  With hambat he'll easily miss the scale, but even with dark sword I think there is a chance to miss it.  I haven't experienced him missing with ds yet, but it feels like the stun can come out a lot slower.

I think Warly using volt jelly and wetting dragonfly is the only 100% reliable solo scale.

[mr. brj]

On 2/5/2023 at 2:08 AM, mr. brj said:

From what I understand, and I might be wrong here, harvesting actions solely rely on the duration of their animations, and unlike combat actions, they don’t have a minimum frame limit on how long they are supposed to last.

By the way, can someone more capable than me confirm/correct this assumption? I'm genuinely curious about how it exactly works, and don't want to spread misinformation.

[Wonky656]

Personally I think that these slow speeds could be because the updates are being ported to Switch and on this console the game runs at a maximum 30fps, I think it makes sense

[mr. brj]

7 hours ago, Wonky656 said:

Personally I think that these slow speeds could be because the updates are being ported to Switch and on this console the game runs at a maximum 30fps, I think it makes sense

The client on computers also run on a fixed, unchangeable 30 "fps", or better said, 30 ticks per second, which are half as fast as the server ticks. Also all things aside, the limitations of one hardware having an influence on the performance of another is not benefitting anyone, so I doubt this is the case to begin with.

I personally believe that the main cause of the inconsistent attack speed, for example, is this difference in the amount of ticks between the client and the server per second, however this is just my uneducated guess. However, if this is indeed the case, I can see how tedious it will be for the devs to fix these issues mainly by focusing on the ticks of the client. This is why I suggest giving issues related to attack and action speeds a priority on the to-do list. They obviously require intense work, and focusing on semi- or non-relevant aspects of the game won't help in addressing these issues in the long run.

As I said in the original post, there is, and has been, definitely something unintentional going on with the player's actions, and my main point is that these issues should be prioritized before other aspects regarding the same topic.