Mantis blade kill animations are too slow, breaks combat phasing.

[Atheos101]

The kill animation needs to have its speed upped by quite a bit. As it is right now it feels like you can go and make some tea in between kills. In specific, im talking about the execution animation where you stick the blades in someone and... for what ever the reason... lifts them up, look at them, then gently put them back down. Frankly the whole thing could use some tender care, but the speed as it is is just bad. It takes you out of the combat experience completely.

If you've got 10 enemies to go through and just go for that execute, it'll feel like a chore.

 

[Mr.0bama95]

+1

 

[DvanH]

Feels so boring to have the Mantis Blades and then there's this one, slow, no-gore animation, going on and on and on... Not just the Mantis Blade but every melee animation is the same for me. Feels like a huge misstep for me.

 

[Raziel5434]

I literally signed up just to agree. I grinded hard just to get the mantis arms while putting every perk point into blades and they are useless because I have to spend 10 seconds on every enemy when I attack them with some animation. Every strong attack is instant kill for me, but I just end up dying every time because enemies are shooting me in the back as I stab some dude.

Awful, how are the design concepts of this game so far behind every other open world RPG that has come before it for years.

Don't even get me started on why I lose my knife when I throw it.

 

[Guide-Of-Souls]

It also completely breakes with the use of Kerenzikov mod (the slow down time with this kill animation). I would appriciate if i could disable the animation at all.

 

[Prae255]

Hopefully this gets replaced with a couple of quick one-two animated executions.

Let's throw in some suggestions for the team:
- Stab them in the chest with one blade, behead with the other.
- A quick series of jabs through the chest and head. Stabstabstabstabstab.
- A vertical swipe chopping off both arms. (I guess they could still bite you, but let's agree that the shock of losing both arms knocks them out)

 

[silentaccuracy]

yeah i wish the animation was a active i can just turn off. gets me killed half the time or spotted.

 

[wang110951]

I think kill animation should only be available for stealth kill.

 

[Pigeon_Of_Peace]

And it won't be a problem if not one thing - you are still taking damage during the animation!!! This makes mantis blades completely unusable and I have to use katana instead.

Mantis blades execution animation is killing me (literally)

 

[Barsenthor]

Pls fix the animation - it's one of the best features of the game. Many times it's buggy, mainly with blades position in the chest, some times body of the enemy disappear.

On the side note - it would be great if there would be more animation? and also make it stealth?

 

[Bourrinopathe]

Just registered to add my vote to this observation/critic.

The Mantis blades are a lot of fun to use but that killing animation destroys the flow and can look clunky on top.
+ you can get shot during the animation (which is good except you can't control when to trigger it)
+ there's a weird lock/pause at the end of the animation (also kills the flow)

Prae255 has some nice suggestions as alternate finishers animations.

It should be fast and brutal and below one and a half or two seconds in duration at least.
There are plenty of martial arts techniques (filipino escrima, etc.) and movies ideas that could fix this.

I'd even be happy with an option to avoid the actual killing blow somewhere in the game settings.

Otherwise: super fun using the blades. Great job on that!

 

[DarlingInTheTanxx]

Have to agree. I'm using the target analyzer just to avoid not only this one but kill animations in general. It completely destroys the flow of combat. For my V that's hardly a solution since crippling enemies mid combat (revolver and mantis build) is a huge part of her kit, but that doesn't work with target analyzer. Well, for now it stays in as no kill animations is the lesser of two evils.
I'd like to see the option to simply deactivate kill animations all together.

 

[Crim_Vicious]

Not to mention that the animation when it happens is janky af. Looks so twitchy and cheesy with little to no sound effects. But this feels like a drop in the bucket compared to the fact that there are glitches where your fingernails fall off and float next to your blades, or the blades (as well as all arm upgrades) negate SEVERAL perks and other cyberware modifications.

 

[UK_SPAWN_UK]

This is absolutley ruining the melee for me... quick list is easier than long sentance of moaning so...



-No stealth kill option with melee only grab.
-Doing the long kill animation with mantis blades when you dont want to do it (because you were sprinting when you pressed it)

- Cancels out of slow-mo when you do this wasting your cyberware use.
-Animation is too slow and leaves you vulnerable for too long after the animation frames have finished (the worst bit!)

-when using slow-mo you cant do the combos with mantis blades, it only does the one same 1st attack swipe over and over, meaning you cant use the perk that applies bleeding and that means you cant recover health from hitting bleeding enemies.

-Sprinting then jumping makes the sprint stay active even when releasing the key, so you are always sprinting and have to press sprint again to stop sprinting

-The super-jump legs sometimes (when reloading a save) do not work and you must jank-around with sliding, changing weapons and all jumping etc untill it remembers you can hold the key to charge the jump again.




The combination of the above things means melee and mantis blades are basically broken and useless in any fight with more than 1 person. Kind of annoying when you have invested 60+ hrs in going down that skill-tree / route...

this for me is one of the only things im not enjoying about the game. i play it daily and have played nothing else since it came out.. i just really really feel dissapointed and put-off from doing melee now.

Other than that the game is really cool, and im really finding it a lot of fun.

so thanks to CDPR devs for all your hard work. Please keep improving!

 

[Buckadoz]

Also, killing someone like this doesn't give you a Cold Blood stack or activate the life regen on kill from the Blades tree, so in addition to standing still while you die your Cold Blood ticks down and you lose a 20% heal.

 

[Operation40]

oh.. I kept hitting buttons assuming I could combo during that time and result in different "finishing moves".. yah know.. like a modern game.

but no, I guess it's just some weird intimate moment with my victim, that I seem to trigger a TON.. way more than intended.

 

[Christovsk]

Y'all thanks for the warning my next upgrade was going to be mantis blades.
Clearly as mentioned, they absolutely have to have short animations and/or make you immune to damage during it.

 

[gosplat]

Not really the greatest solution, but using the eye mod that makes your attacks non lethal removes those animations. This also makes headshots not work however.

 

[QuantEffect]

Yeah I'm also using the Target Analysis mod as the execution animation is really annoying. I almost quit using the mantis blades just because of the animation. I also signed on this forum just to complain about this issue. Mantis blades are one of the most iconic features of this game and I think it didn't receive the attention it deserved. As it stands, the animation is boring, way too slow, breaks flow and makes you stand there frozen after the execution for around 1 second doing nothing, how is that reasonable??

My suggestion would be to add a togglable setting to completely turn of executions as a quick fix.
Using the target analysis mod is also annoying as you do less damage and combat is less satisfying.

Maybe down the road fix animations completely by adding more animations, make all animations much quicker (max 2-3 seconds), maybe make an ultimate longer animation for just the last enemy in combat (the game should be able to detect the number of enemies currently in combat).

 

[Exarch_Vorgar]

I think the problem is ( for me , at least ) : this is the only melee combat takedown... If there would be more, it would be funnier I think. And + for damages immunity while doing takedowns.