Suggestion: an option to remove animations

Early Access Archive Early Access Game Feedback
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I love the game, but I have big problem with committing to the amount of time the game (or devs?) require. But after playing since April, I’ve realized more and more that I spend more time WATCHING than I do PLAYING.

I get it – there’s a lot of eye candy. It’s neat (and a series first?) To have your hero step forward and swing their weapon. To have the mob walk in from off screen. To have it go through its death spasms and whatnot. To watch your Ray of Frost cast and hit home. …to watch… EVERYTHING.

But after a while, a select amount of us might wanna just get back to matching gems, building mana, casting spells, and to say it plainly – playing the game. PQ1 didn’t need it. PQ2 didn’t need it. Even Galactrix didn’t need it. MPQ brought in some animations, but has the option to turn them off (which saves a ton of time).

So, for those of us who are invested in the match-3 RPG gameplay, and wanna play the game at a faster speed… can we please disable animations with a toggle switch in the options? Thank you.

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Related thread (discussion went to the more general topic of animations):

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I concur. I tap the screen in vain hoping to skip the animation and get to the next screen.
The amount of time required has caused me to consider taking a “break” until the next update.

To that, I also think the back to back fights are dull and repetitive. Dungeons should be 4, tops.

The story becomes a chore with mindless default random assortment of three fights with no thought put into them, these should probably be reduced to 1.

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yeah would be nice story mode animation option and minimal animations.

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The guy that slowly saunters onto screen with his staff takes an age and a day. I get the animator wants us to enjoy his work, but he could have that time halved and still be too long.

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Agree, it was cool to watch all the animation with the first hero, but now I get so annoyed because of the animation, which is added to everything. It takes way to much time.

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The option to remove the animations (or speed them up x4) could be unlocked after the storyline is completed
That way everyone gets to enjoy them all but then has a choice

Perhaps dragons are excluded from this since they are end bosses and do look pretty cool

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Yeah I gotta add on to this too (along with basically everyone who has been playing this since it was released in EA). It feels like I only spend 10% of my time actually playing the game. I tend to put down my phone after doing my last match sometimes and do something else and come back after the 2-3 seconds of “countdown” then all of the animations and everything else going on. Seeing them the first few times was cool, but this just reminds me of Final Fantasy 7 Ruby and Emerald fights 20+ years ago where I’d do my summons and come back 5 minutes later to see if they are done…

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Happy to hear that others are in the same position. They say that misery loves company, but in the case of an early access game, that company can potentially inspire changes. :wink:

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+1

The slowness of the gameplay is the #1 reason I would stop playing this game.

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It is the reason I stopped playing. Still checking forums weekly or so, in case something changes, but I want something I can pick up and make progress with across 5-10 minutes of time, not an hour.

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The more I play, the more I’m getting to this point. I’ve put in so much time and effort into builds and events and etc etc… and it sucks that so much time is wasted waiting on screens.

Character animations.
Enemy animations.
Gem cascades that could be GREATLY sped up.
Opening a chest just to watch an animation and flourish regarding which items you got, one at a time.
Even shopping has a flash to it, which is unnecessary.
There should be a button upon buying dungeon marks from your bazaar that can shortcut you to the dungeon marks/chest store as well.
When your loot is full, there should be an optional button to press to take you to the loot inventory that’s overflowing.

So much unnecessary time spent. I could forgive it somewhat if it was back on my console, after paying some cash for a full version of the game. But that’s not the reality here.

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Hey all,

I shared recently in this thread, that I had passed this similar feedback along;

While I do not believe animations will be removed, there has been some great suggestions across these threads on ways animations can be implemented to reduce the impact on the speed of gameplay.

As mentioned in my post, we definitely understand that some players are more interested in the core match 3 game mechanic of Puzzle Quest! Not everyone is deep into the lore & story, whereas others (like myself) really enjoy the world building.

We want the game experience to be accessible to all types of players.

Jeto - Support Human :woman_mage:t2:

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Honestly, Jeto I appreciate your efforts as I know you mean well and want the game to succeed.

What is so frustrating here is that the animations are wasting huge amounts of player time and it appears that the PQ3 team does not care.

If the goal is to slow down farming, then come up with a better way to do that without punishing casual players that want to complete daily content in a timely manner.

As for this:

As mentioned in my post, we definitely understand that some players are more interested in the core match 3 game mechanic of Puzzle Quest! Not everyone is deep into the lore & story, whereas others (like myself) really enjoy the world building.

There is nothing added to the story, lore, or world, by the same animations over and over during a fight, or when opening a chest, etc.

What really indicates how badly the animations and gem falls slow the game down is when you cast a spell that triggers an achievement like “level a Paladin character to 50” because the game immediately calculated the win condition, but you sit there for 30+ seconds while you watch the final animations, gem fall (because your spell also triggered the auto-end turn), and creature death animation. Then you get the 10 second level up animation. Then you get the 10-30+ seconds to open a chest and watch individual animations for every item.

It is probably faster to read this post than it is to watch the process in game.

Right now the game plays so slowly that I often get distracted between turns, phone locks due to inactivity, and I come back and hope that the fight is still active, but often times end up back at the main menu and lose the battle progress altogether.

I personally will not renew my 30 day VIP until I see meaningful changes that reduce the time required to complete daily content. I think that call that “voting with your wallet”. That said, you can secure me as a $10+ a month customer simply by respecting the use of my free time.

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I don’t feel this has any impact on the core/world building, and am not entirely sure why that was brought up. Even if you enjoy the world building (which, to be fair, I did enjoy, and did read every bit of dialogue up to the conclusion of chapter 15 back in 0.35), being able to minimize the amount of dead time while “playing” the game would create a more enjoyable experience.

Even when I stopped playing, before 0.37, the amount of time spent actively playing or making decisions compared to the amount of time I just sat watching animations was somewhere around 1:2 or 1:3, which was only tolerable because you could still defeat enemies in 1-2 turns.

It’s about respecting the player’s time more than it’s about plot or power leveling or whatever concerns the devs might have (hard to say, considering their near eternal silence).

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I’m all for the removal of animations… but I believe it should be a toggle in the settings, there for anyone to turn on or off.

If the devs are worried about world building and lore, and really want people to experience it first, I suggest to do it like another poster suggested: make the toggle unlocked only after completing the story your first time.

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I will note, I was not suggesting that the development team won’t remove animations because of anything related to world building or lore.
While I don’t believe they will be removed in a complete sense, there is always the potential for there to be changes to them in future, such as options to disable them, have them play in the background or have generally shorter animations!

I have written that poorly and was more sharing my opinions on playing and my own experience.

So apologies for my miscommunication there.

Jeto - Support Human :woman_mage:t2:

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The most egregious one that can be dealt with is the chest opening animation and carry on. The next egregious is the post battle marquee of winnings. Stop wasting my time and phone battery :roll_eyes:

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Might be worth considering a “Jeto - PQ3 Player” forum account :slight_smile:

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Here’s the problem in my opinion @Jeto, the design of the animations does not jive with the design of the playthrough experience. While the animations are honestly pretty cool and graphically impressive, they are designed for a more grandiose type experience (think end of level boss encounter). If I only had to do a handful of challenging, yet visually impressive battles, and then I get rewarded with awesome rewards that help me progress in the game, then the current animations would probably be welcomed and “part of the experience”.

But that is so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, sooooo far from our playthrough experience. The game, currently, is designed so that you have to complete hundreds, nay, thousands of battles in order to get Legendary/Mythic gear (which is what everyone wants). The rewards from each battle is usually very insignificant. You’re hoping for the 1 out of 50 or 100 that are meaningful and that number only grows more rare as your gear gets better. It takes 1268 shards from 5 different categories to take a Level 1 gear item to Level 45. The game doesn’t support targeting any kind of shard, neither type (Weapon, Armor, Accessory, Spell, Minion) or rarity (Minor, Lesser, Greater, Major, Superior). So you have to just do hundreds of battles and hope that you randomly get what you want… which you usually don’t. 10 shards of the wrong type. 8 shards of the wrong type. 4 shards of the right type but wrong rarity. 12 shards of the wrong type. 3 shards of the right type and rarity. On and on you go… hundreds of times until you’ve hit the random lottery enough times to actually do something. So, when you’re unable to target the shards you want or anything that you want, you’re forced to just grind hundreds and hundreds of battles, which leads players to want to just finish the battles as quickly as they can because there are still hundreds more that need to be done. After thousands of battles with the same animations, you become accustomed to the timing of things. You clearly see how much time you’re spending just waiting for the animations to end so that you can actually play the game. The animations are no longer part of the fun at that point… because the game is designed to require grinding through hundreds and hundreds of battles. No, the animations are just in the way at that point.

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