Some spells just have excessively long animations and the casting animations, in my opinion, are also unnecessarily long. I would like to see the animations sped up to save time. It is especially annoying to have to wait through an additional round of casts all because a player fizzled. If casting time and animations could be accelerated and certain spells could have parts cut or edited, it would make for a much smoother and enjoyable experience.
Area of effect swap spells, for instance, shouldn't have to swap health after each attacked enemy. Much time could be saved if the swap occurred after all enemies were attacked and the player received a lump sum.
Over the years, the developers have actually sped up spell animations at least twice. I think many of them have become more tolerable, but I think there's still more room for improvement.
The biggest time-wasters are AoE spells. As many posters have noted over the past few discussions on this topic, the best way to reduce spell length is to have AoE spells simultaneously strike all players, rather than one at a time.
This is completely doable, but it would require a complete overhaul on a few animation sequences, along with event timings (flags that coordinate when your player is hit, when magic sparkly effects appear, when damage is calculated and presented above your head, etc.). My guess is that paying the animation staff is not cheap, or we'd have this fixed already.
"This is completely doable, but it would require a complete overhaul on a few animation sequences, along with event timings (flags that coordinate when your player is hit, when magic sparkly effects appear, when damage is calculated and presented above your head, etc.). My guess is that paying the animation staff is not cheap, or we'd have this fixed already."
Well, but if they started with the Shadow enhanced spells and started this on all new spells coming out, it could be done easily. Then, slowly, one spell, per school, per update, they do it, it would be a gradual thing. The WORST spells would be those with multiple AoE steps like Scarecrow, Eurikir Axebreaker, etc. Things like Mass prisms, mass weaknesses, mass traps, mass blades, etc are a one step spell. From the PLAYER standpoints, there's not all THAT many spells (when you consider we have 7 schools worth)
If they went thru the whole entire game and did it, yes, it would take a long time, but if they just did our school spells only, it woudl cut down on the amount of work needed (especially since many of our spells monsters use)
@dayerider Sure, I'd like it if developers could take a prioritized approach for what AoE spells should be converted to "simulstrikes." My tally is that there are quite a few more AoE's than 36, but as we know, they're not all spells that consume a lot of time, and some aren't even used that frequently. Shortening the worst of the worst offenders first would be the best way to go about it.
And, you're absolutely right though that they could take preventative action so to avoid creating unreasonably long AoE spells in the future (*cough* Khrulhu).
@dayerider Sure, I'd like it if developers could take a prioritized approach for what AoE spells should be converted to "simulstrikes." My tally is that there are quite a few more AoE's than 36, but as we know, they're not all spells that consume a lot of time, and some aren't even used that frequently. Shortening the worst of the worst offenders first would be the best way to go about it.
And, you're absolutely right though that they could take preventative action so to avoid creating unreasonably long AoE spells in the future (*cough* Khrulhu).
Those totals are for the spells WE can learn vs all spells in the game. If we went with all in the game, it would probably be over 100 easily. My point was, to focus on the spells that EVERYBODY can cast, not JUST monsters. Perfect example, Tempest can be cast by monsters and people alike. If they were to fix that spell, it would speed up both side of the attack circle.
