kiting Make spiders match their attack radius

[JohnWatson]

I think a lot of us already know how misleading attack animations are. Just as you thought that you have successfully escaped an enemy's reach, you then lie in disbelief as a piece of invisible mass, seemingly attached to your enemy's appendage, strikes and brings your character down.

Spiders are the worst case of this. Normal spiders, spider warriors, cave spiders, and spider queens all have this problem. It is demonstrated by this picture below:

You can see this happening yourself by spawning spiders or any spider variant via the console. Let it attack you and move a few steps away before their attack connects.
You might say that this is fine because spiders have low health pools and are very easily to kill anyway. However, it gets even more ridiculous when a boss, the spider queen, is also guilty of this. The spider queen has an attack radius of 5 metres or 1.25 turfs and this is how it looks like:

The spider queen's attack animation barely even touches the third dash! This is unacceptable and makes the game very inconsistent. This might be the reason why many less skilled players find it hard to learn kiting or combat in general.

I believe that there are three ways of fixing this.

The first way is to reduce the spiders' attack radii to match their attack animation. This will be a significant change and I fear that this might cause spider and spider variants to become more trivial of a mob than they already are. I wouldn't like this change very much.

The second way is to re-animate the attack animations. This won't have an effect on gameplay, however I don't think re-animating would solve the problem because even if the attack animations get exaggerated, their attack radii is simply too large and simply re-animating won't make up for it.

The third way is what I believe is the best and simplest solution. The solution is to change the spiders' sprites along with their animations. While that may seem like it requires too much effort just to fix a nitpicky issue, I assure you that it will be worth it. And to help Klei with this solution, I've made mock-ups for them to easily copy and implement into the game:

Spoiler

What's your opinion? Do you think any change should be made?

[CatBurger]

I think we should take the third option, you've done a great job with it.

[Maslak]

2/10 not enough legs

 

[JohnWatson]

Just now, CatBurger said:

I think we should take the third option, you've done a great job with it.

Yes, it's ridiculous how normal spiders literally have an attack radius of 3 metres (0.75 turfs) meanwhile their attack animation barely move an inch. I believe my third proposed change would make the 3-metre attack radius easier to acknowledge for players.

[Ressayez]

They acknowledged and fixed this with bees, but Klei decided to go with the first option here, it likely took too much time and effort and basically broke the game as we know it, now that the bees are not blessed with elongated invisible stingers. Now, I think it's time to do the same with spiders and I think that the solution here is obvious, and John has already kindly provided the assets.

Pick number three, my lord.

[Palecwsmalec1]

that third option actually looks kinda cool if you look past the jokes. Spider warrior looking real threatening, i like it!

[Swanky Psammead]

I am not sure I have an issue with this in the case of Spider Warriors (and all Cave/Ruins-based leaping spider variants) as their leaping attack already telegraphs that they are a threat from a greater distance than one might assume. I agree in the case of standard spiders, though (and in seriousness I think your mockup for the standard spider is not half bad; I think there is probably a middle ground to be reached between extending its limb length and the animation of its lunge that could look very reasonable.)

In the case of the Spider Queen I am somewhat more in favor of decreasing her attack radius, and perhaps buffing her in other respects to compensate (more frequent spider minion spawns? higher ratio of warriors to regular spiders spawned?)