To preface, I am completely unfamiliar with the actual combat system’s design and whether it uses frames etc. for animations. This is a pretty hard experience to describe for me but the main point I feel can benefit game play heavily.
I appreciate the intentional design of the combat system with its emphasis on deliberate actions and punishment for spamming, which aligns well with the souls-like genre. However, I think that the current input buffering window is too generous, resulting in a disconnect between player intent and in-game actions for such dynamic combat scenarios.
Right now, if you press attack several times in anticipation of an animation, the game queues all those inputs, which leads your character to execute multiple attacks long after your last input. This can make the combat feel less responsive and more rigid than I feel it should be. For example, sometimes when I press attack three times while waiting for an animation to start, it will often lock you into three full attacks, even if the situation has changed and you no longer want to commit to that combo. I am not looking for animation cancelling if you commit to a disadvantageous attack and the animation starts, but rather the ability to react dynamically to changing situations such as roll in between an attack coming out.
It is weird to reference but I think a useful comparison would be in fighting games like Tekken which I feel has a strong balance in this regard. I do not know the actual system design of both NRFTW and Tekken but I am just saying what it “feels” like. Tekken has a much shorter input buffer window, which respects player timing and can punish mashing, while avoiding chaining unintended moves. Because of the smaller window, the time from input to the actual move’s visual feedback is less, translating into what feels like more responsive and fluid combat.
Again, to be clear, I am not asking for animation canceling or a faster recovery, that would undermine the design of certain weapons and the direction of the game’s combat system. I’m suggesting that shortening the input buffer window slightly would still preserve the punishments for spamming while allowing players to have more control and reactivity in combat. It would reduce the sense of being locked into actions when the combat situation changes, especially when dealing with multiple enemies.
This tweak could make combat feel more dynamic and player-driven without compromising the strategic style NRFTW aims for.
If you double tap your dodge input on pc or controller it queues a second roll/sodge input well before the first animation is even close to finishing. Test it out with a rapid double tap and you should be able to see how large the buffer window is. Animation lock in my interpretation is the inability to make inputs during an animation. What I am referring to in my most recent comment (and overall) is the fact that if you attempt to dodge waiting for the first roll animation to startup you get forced into a second etc. The window for that is way too high imo. It’s one thing if you are remotely close to the end of an animation, going into another. In this case doing it close to the startup animation of the first roll forces a second roll.
Honestly, I have never experienced any input queuing here. And I did test it very thoroughly.
In case of the dodge you mentioned - no matter how many times I tapped it always ended with one dodge and I could immediately execute any other viable action after that dodge.
Yes this is definitely a big problem for me as well. Especially the weapon switches are very badly buffered. Since I use a 3 weapon set-up and change them dynamically during combat, I died to this buffering problem so many times.
For example I’ll do a rune attack and during that attack I’ll decide I want to switch weapons, the attack ends even though the animation is playing the last few frames that you could cancel, I click the weapon change, and it doesn’t switch. So I roll because by this time the enemy is attacking, and I click the weapon change button again during the roll, and the weapon switches 1, 2 or 3 times right after the roll. It is not even reliable enough to play around it.