We need a way to "guard" with Shield Defence

This is something that bugs me. A lot. Shield Defence is a cool set, and I like a lot of the custom shields, but it lacks one BIG aspect that really should be part of any Shield set - the ability to at least animate guarding with it. Oh, sure, if you're lucky and the moon is in the right phase and you're not touching the keyboard then once in a thousand times you get attacked, your character will bring his shield in front of his face as though he's guarding with it. But I really don't think this is enough.

I honestly don't know what can be done about it. The best I can figure is we just alter the idle and running stances with a shield out so that the shield isn't held to the side, but rather out in front of the character, as though the character is blocking. This is already the case with Ninja Run because of it's "running elbow jab" nature. I suppose I could ask for the Ninja Run running style to be made as an option for regular run, but it's way too goofy for general use, in my opinion. But I WOULD like to see an option to make our characters hold their shields in front of their faces more often than they do now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

To be fair (and to my knowledge), none of the defense/resist sets have any animation for dodging/taking blows. Super reflexes, for example. Any non-ranged attacks look like they hit you, the only difference is that they don't do damage.

I mentioned this in the open beta phase. The response was "SD has guarding animations!".

I'd say this falls under the "reactive defense" requests that I have frequently seen. Things like Super Reflexes should use dodge animations when a "miss" or "deflected" is registered, and sets like shield defense should have guarding animations. There was a recent request (within the past month or two, I think) for an armor set that reacted/glowed different based on whether an attack landed or not.

I am for all of these things, but of course, standard code rant applies. My guess is that the problem arises when characters are targeted by multiple attacks from multiple targets at the same time. Scenario: Player is attacked by 3 targets at once. Each of those 3 attacks needs a hit roll to be calculated independently: 2 miss, 1 hits. Animations are calculated on a per-attack basis, so in the span of time it takes 3 individual attacks to reach the Player, 3 different animation codes are trying to launch at the same time, each based on their own individual to-hit roll.

The character is trying to do too many things at once. From what I can see in-game, this is why animations can become skewed, or just plain not happen. Any time you get hit with a boulder from an Outcast Brick, and go flying backwards in a standing position (as opposed to flopping onto your back which is the default), it is likely because your character was in the middle of a different animation upon getting hit by the boulder. I am sure you can think of other scenarios where this is an issue, and I would bet money that the "once in a blue moon" scenarios to which you are referring, where your shield-bearing character actually uses the "dodge/deflect" animation, it is because the character model was not in the process of executing any other animation.

Yeah, if you're a Tanker, surrounded by 17 enemies, all attacking you, you'd get locked into a guarding animation, unable to perform an attack animation.

Well, our "dodge" animations are interruptible, but that's not really what I wanted to focus on. Dodge animations HAVE to be interruptible precisely so we don't get locked down dodging too many enemies.

However, what I have a problem with is the general running and combat stances with Shield Defence. I realise that they were made the way they were to save up on animation time, but the result of this is that the shield is almost never raised. It provides defence, but only in terms of numbers, rarely in terms of visuals. It's a lot like carrying a sword but never animating an attack and just having enemies take Lethal damage when you activate your powers.

I suspect the only reasonable way to "guard" with Shield Defence is to give us custom idle and walking animations where the shield is held in front at all times. Not just when we are attacked, I mean AT ALL TIMES. Our current stance is left foot forward, which means the right hand is always back. Well, how about we use this stance but instead of holding the left hand extended forward with the shield pointing off to the side, we have the left hand bent inward with the shield pointing forward? The run is a bit more tricky, in that a whole new animation might be needed, but I feel it's high time to think about adding basic animation customization, anyway.

Personally, what I really want to do is have a running animation where the shield is held out in front, as if yo ram people with it while the weapon is held behind and pointing UP (as opposed to the back and down orientation of Ninja Run). I'll see if I can't get a screenshot from the source material that inspired me to want this again.

*edit*
Unfortunately, the only one I could find wasn't very good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.