Duration for Skill Animation

So I've been really stuck in this dilemma on how 'flashy' I should make my skill look like. 


While I've been pretty much inspired by Vibrato; I noticed a lot of my gamer friends aren't too necessarily keen on super-duper Sephiroth's-Supernova kind of duration for a skill. 


Therefore, I would like to see what are the general consensus of the fellow RM Developers here on how long would you set your skill duration to for both regular skills and 100-TP-costing-Ultimate-skill. 


Additionally, if there's a function to 'turn off animations' on the Options screen, how 'stripped' it down it should be? 

Did you meant skill animation duration?

The whole thing, from the movement to the enemy, motion changes, actor conjures meteorfall, deals damage to the enemies, and then return back to original position. Vibrato's sequences for one skill can take up to 20++ seconds. I guess that duration is fine for finisher move, but I wanna know if it bugs other people too.

Well...i think that 4 sec is fine if you want long animations, above that you loose focus of the battle. RPGs requires attention in order to come up with a proper strategy else what's the point?


That's why i never liked the cinematic summons from FF series, combat was slow enough with the ATB and then you had to wait over 10 sec.

Could be, but I personally use that 'long duration' to think up what to do next (I can be quite slow on a non-turn combat) so I guess there's other ways to look at it either as a blessing or a curse xD

It depends on when you are doing your big animations, to me.


For a super-special move, like a final boss skill, or you use a summon, the first time it is ok. But others, specially if it is unskippable... Maybe if I really liked it I'd like seeing it again sometimes, but all the time would be a problem.

This is a subject which has come up in several threads, though often the discussion has focused more on the actual skill animation, rather than the whole sequence shown with SV battlers (which I think is what you are talking about).  The general consensus, although not a unanimous one, is this:


Ordinary skills which will be seen repeatedly throughout the game should never go above 2-4 seconds.  People get sick and tired of them.  The shorter and crisper the better.


If it's a super-duper-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it type of skill, then probably 6 seconds is enough.


Over 10 seconds has a lot of people tearing their hair out, even if it is only seen rarely.  If you're using the particular skill in some mega-boss battle, chances are that you will use that skill more than once, and so seeing it repeated in the same battle was, for many people, a no-no.  The example I used to put this into perspective (well, perspective for me, anyway) was to say that if Usain Bolt can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, this character can get their skill over and done with in that time as well.  Even 10 seconds struck many people as far too long.


20 seconds?  Nope.  And if that is 20 seconds per actor and you have 4 actors in your battle party, and each one has .............

20 seconds way too long unless that's like the ultimate attack of the final form of the final boss that you might only see once ever.; even then most people would think that's way too long. Probably better off going 5 sec and under for everything with more commonly used skills on the lower end of the spectrum.

The shorter the better generally. To give you a reference in terms of number of frames, for regular attacks I usually make them about 5-8 frames. They don't need to show much. It's meant to just be a strike, or a slice, or a burst of fire. For special moves that aren't used as often, generally I try to keep it below 20 frames. The longer you make the animation, the more reluctant a player will be to use that attack, simply because they get sick of waiting so long for the animation to play, and that's a no-no.

Keep it as short as possible. I think my longest animation right now is 1.5 seconds in my game, and that was for my Armageddon skill. After all, if your animations are so long the player can read a book while playing your game (which I did during the FF8 summons after a while, one of them I clocked at over 2 minutes!), you are doing something wrong.

Generally for skill Animations I recommend:

• 0.5 seconds or less for basic attacks and other basic actions (ordinary actions used frequently and choosable via one click)
  
• 0.5 - 1 second for simple skill animations (damage-dealing fire spells, triple strike attack skills, etc.)
  
• 1 - 2.5 seconds for infrequent skills that you really want the player to notice (limit breaks, chain attacks, 100 TP skills, and other actions that won't be used more than once per 2-3 minutes of combat)
  

If you're using Yanfly's Action Sequences or similar, and showing the entire arc of movement of the character, you can safely double these times if you want to, because the downtime feels somewhat less daunting when your characters are doing something different every few tenths of a second.  However, don't take that as a license to make a basic attack last 2.5 seconds (or a finishing move take 15 seconds) - players want to play your game.  Watching a lovingly-constructed 15 second animation might be nice - once.  After that it's just a slap in the face to your player.


I usually see games with "Turn off animations" simply place the damage number on the target and move on immediately.  Personally I'm a fan of choosing between "full" or "short" animations, with the short animation being a very quick wind-up and the final "result" of the action animating on the target - e.g. if the full animation is a wizard going into a casting animation for a second, then ice gathers from the air until it forms a cone around the target and shatters, the short animation would be an extremely abbreviated version of the casting animation (~0.4 seconds), then the ice cone appears immediately and shatters.

Final Fantasy 8 had the Eden summon clocking in at 72.6 second animation time.  Anything you do is short in comparison.


I think the reason the devs made them so long is to give a sense of engagement in the battle for the primary feature of FF8 and to give a feeling of importance.  When you spend 30 seconds listening to a villain monologue but then your ultimate badass summon skill is only 10, there's something off about the importance factor in feeling.  Unless the rest of the combat is lightning quick and a blitz of hyper animations.


Just make sure it feels like it stands out from the rest of the game and that time wasted makes the skill feel mighty.

I'd like to point out everyone complains about the animations of FF8 being too long.


And at least in FF8 you had the Boost ability, which meant that you could make the summon stronger by pressing the square button repeatedly at the right times of the animations. It made the length have a use and yet it is still overly long.

@Lord Semaj: FF8 failed in that aspect with me then, as I read a book to that Eden summon. I clocked it at over 2 minutes too, though I was on the PC version so that is probably the difference.


@Waterguy: Doesn't mean much though if you stop caring about that little 5% boost vs the 60 seconds of wasted time. I noted my damage both before and after boosting and the difference was so little I didn't feel like wasting my time, especially as all that button smashing hurt my hand in the end.


Though, I still think the honor for longest skill animation ever goes to Supernova from FF7. I'm pretty sure I had a beard grow on me during that skill animation. :)

As I said, it made the length have a use and it was still overly long.


I think it is much more useful in specific battles. I remember it being a faved strategy against that robot spider in the beginning.


In Supernova's defense, it is the final boss' skill. It is ok for the first time. On the other hand, besides rule of cool it is kind of a stupid animation for not-as-strong a skill - it is a gravity skill, meanng it gives lots of damage (15/16 of hp if I read right) and states, but cannot kill. And it is the same animation all the time, not just the first.

For skills that are regularly used (multiple times per battle), anything over 1 second is too long in my opinion.


For skills that are used maybe once or twice per battle, anything over 2 seconds is too long.


For skills that are used rarely (usually ultimates or something against bosses), then maybe up to 5 seconds should be okay?


For skills that are shown maybe once or twice in the entire game, I'd be fine with an insanely long animation (up to 30 seconds?) if you can manage to make it look awesome.


For any skill that goes over 5 seconds, there should be a skip animation option. Golden Sun let you skip longer battle animations with the press of a button, and I really liked that. Not sure if that's actually doable in RPG Maker, though...


General guideline: Shorter = Better. But I find longer animations easier to accept if they're awesome to look at, but not many games manage to achieve that, so it's saver to go with as short as you can possibly make them.