Is it faster to move in diagonal or squarely to reach a certain point?

Question

Suppose that there are no obstacles in between: I was wondering what is best, to move squarely (A) or in diagonal (B) to reach a certain point. I put an example below:

Would the answer be that it depends on the distance that you have to travel? Maybe it is better to move in diagonal for a shorter distance and in square for a longer one? It might depend on whether there's a delay while moving in diagonal against in a straight line where the character moves actually faster? Then maybe it is in fact the same?

It would be interesting to have both theoretical and empirical results, that is, having the maths (maybe with an example), and some timings taken from tests within the game.

Comments

Less squares on Route B than Route A so Route B would be faster. 

---

Diagonal walking seems to take 3 times longer than a single square, instead of expected sqrt(2) ~= 1.41 ~ 1.5, and thus is larger than up+right. Why? I don't know. Probably to favor straight movement in pathfinding. Maybe I'll elaborate a full answer one day. Now I'll remain this as "trust me bro".

Answer 1

Diagonal is slower than "normal" movement , but there is one thing where you can go faster with diagonal instead of straight movements.

There is a interesting thing about diagonal movement. when you move on diagonal there is a delay that usually slow your character , but if you go down on a stair or piramid or something where you change the floor that delay is more lower than the normal and you can move faster. You can try it on Thais for example , go down to the -1 stairs doing the diagonal movement and you will see that you can almost inmediatly go again diagonal.

Comments

wow, I never considered about that! I gonna test and use it as well now!

Answer 2

I guess that the optimal way to reach upper X from the bottom X would be going without the need of using any diagonal.

My best call to that intuition and feeling against going diagonal is when we are in a PvP situation. A classical thing to combo an enemy (curiously, it is very hard to discover who used this tactic first) was the "paralyze diagonal surfing" (I am adapting what Brazilians used to call that in Portuguese). Going diagonal is sensibly slower compared to straight walking. So if you are paralyzed and receives a diagonal push (an enemy pushes you and makes you go diagonally to somewhere), the enemy team can combo at this window opened by the diagonal movement + paralyze. And even you use a turn to heal, a second paralyze can come right after the first... All at once, that can be deadly. It is a way to for example, combo and kill an enemy with a lot of hitpoints (for example, a high level knight).

So, although I never walked a lot using diagonal, I would go with that on situational conditions only. The regular movement is pretty much all that you need. For PvP and PvE, diagonal is most definitely something that I don't recommend on playing for too long due it being a somewhat slower movement. Be alert to go diagonal if you are about to be trapped (and face a full box of mobs hitting you, for example).

Answer 3

Well, considering that when we click on the map to the character move it goes always  on straight lines, also considering that the mechanic of the game while use a click on the map is that the character will use the shortest way to arrive at the point clicked, I would say that squarely is faster than diagonal.

Of course I'm just speculating, the ideal would be to time two routes to the same point. I´ll try it later.