Animations in Dev Demos - lacking

Bit of feedback on what i have seen so far ~

I do not know how much work has gone into the character animations, but there is a lot to be desired. Things don't seem fluid, they still seem like they are skating around, the footsteps arent impactful enough for immersion. The new leaning system helps, but you cant just incorporate leaning left and right, there are shoulder and torso movements and twisting that enhances the realism alot, vaulting seems okay, but it looks like a race car suddenly hitting a wall when you start vaulting/ climbing, the timing is all off. The characters all look like that are pegged to a pole with a carrot up their preverbial.

Not sure on your production scale or budget, but it may be worth looking into something like RADiCAL (AI driven real time animation creation supported by Epic and FBX exports available) Getting a pakour actor to help with movement animations, and get the sound team to make the foot steps feel more impactful. This will improve immersion a lot. One thing i noticed about new world although there is MUCH to be desired about gameplay, they really nailed the sounds, all the actions and movement feels really impactful with the use of very well timed sound bites and this improves the feeling of the game by a lot.

TL DR
- Animations feel un-imersive and unrealistic. Use something like RADiCAL (AI powered real time animation generation) to improve animation movements and help with naturalization of movements
- Improve sound bites to provide more impactful movement in game.
- something new world actually got right, sound and movement animations are pretty on point, not that i would take any leaves about game design from them, there are aspects of that game that make it playable, even with the mess it is in.

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bloodprophet

I think an important part of the video is at the start when Steven reiterated this is a systems test and not a content test.
Not crapping on people as we are seeing a large influx of new names (which is amazing and welcome) but a lot of new people see the videos either from Intrepid or someone else. Sometimes people don't clarify this point so first time eyeballs seeing the game think they are further along then they are.

bloodprophet

More follow up from them 21:00 - 30:10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcDhV0VaAkw

AncientIncant

Thanks all. Will watch these. Apologies for speaking out of turn. So are you two (@Azherae and @bloodprophet) in support of @arsnn assertion that the combat’s progression has been incremental? Would you say it’s concerning?

bloodprophet

Yes. Mainly because we have yet to see the other 5 Archetypes. We have seen progress and Intrepid has listened to the feed back and changed some things. If you watch some of the videos around the same time frame the mage used to jump to cast fireball. The community spoke out about how it was to flashy for a basic skill. They changed it.
Playing the alpha 1 we saw improvements as it progressed but there is still a lot of work that still needs done. I don't think we will see anything close to a final look/feel till beta 1.
They will continue to iterate and change stuff. Probably up to and past launch. But so far we have seen changes. Then personal preference comes into play. Are the changes good or bad? Some of it is personal preference some is sounded good on the white board but in practice not so much.

For example for the PAX West demo 2017 they had a quick time event when casting you can see it in the videos. Sounded good in theory but in practice not so much. So they dropped it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miNthlJqkOc

Merek

The animations as they stand, Alpha or not are horrendous. We can all agree on this, however, I dislike the consistent use of the 'Alpha' scapegoat. It's old and used to shut down constructive criticism, a lot, especially on the forum. Just because they aren't finished doesn't mean we can't help direct the developers down a path that results in animations that are interesting instead of bland and/or generic.

Azherae

AncientIncant wrote: »

Thanks all. Will watch these. Apologies for speaking out of turn. So are you two (@Azherae and @bloodprophet) in support of @arsnn assertion that the combat’s progression has been incremental? Would you say it’s concerning?

I don't think it would be fair for me to say anything much more than 'yes, I'm in support of @arsnn assertion', as I have multiple unfounded concerns. To me, they are heavily concerning, but they have no real evidence to back them up other than my intuition and code/design experience.

In other words, I'd guess, and I rather trust Intrepid than guess, for now.

bloodprophet

Merek wrote: »

The animations as they stand, Alpha or not are horrendous. We can all agree on this, however, I dislike the consistent use of the 'Alpha' scapegoat. It's old and used to shut down constructive criticism, a lot, especially on the forum. Just because they aren't finished doesn't mean we can't help direct the developers down a path that results in animations that are interesting instead of bland and/or generic.

No we can't all agree on this. I don't agree and there are many on both side of this.

What direction would you prefer they go with this? Stay constructive.

Sathrago

AncientIncant wrote: »

Thanks all. Will watch these. Apologies for speaking out of turn. So are you two (@Azherae and @bloodprophet) in support of @arsnn assertion that the combat’s progression has been incremental? Would you say it’s concerning?

I am currently working on a small indie arpg and the thing I can tell you is that combat's progression is not tied to other systems unless one person is doing multiple jobs. First you need to make good models that look pretty and could even be two different people working on this, one to do the model sculpting and the other for drawing the textures. Then you need to make a rig(skeletal system that affects joints and movement control during animation). Rigs require quite a bit of testing and remaking to make sure things twist and bend properly for the next part. Animations come next and will require repeated tests that can get intense with a process of finishing an animation, sending it over to be added to the character model, making sure it flows properly, and if there are any issues you repeat the process. After allll of that is done you still need someone to craft the skill effects for the animation if it needs them such as a fire bolt or summoning a bolt of lightning.

Hopefully this makes some sense, but what this means for this topic is that as long as they have multiple workers each part can be done separate from the other systems. The person working on node mechanics will almost never be needed to help with combat mechanics unless they really need to hardcode certain things in.

Merek

bloodprophet wrote: »

No we can't all agree on this. I don't agree and there are many on both side of this.

If you don't think there's an issue with these baseline, near store-bought animations you've got very low standards.

bloodprophet wrote: »

What direction would you prefer they go with this? Stay constructive.

A mix between New World and ArcheAge, the only way they'd be decent.

bloodprophet

Perceptions. But fair enough.

I think both of them look like garbage but we all like different things.

Atama

The animations aren’t very good but they’ve said repeatedly that they’re being worked on.

The rest of the game looks incredible though. Better than New World.

Taleof2Cities

bloodprophet wrote: »

I think an important part of the video is at the start when Steven reiterated this is a systems test and not a content test.
Not crapping on people as we are seeing a large influx of new names (which is amazing and welcome) but a lot of new people see the videos either from Intrepid or someone else. Sometimes people don't clarify this point so first time eyeballs seeing the game think they are further along then they are.

Agree, @bloodprophet, new forum-goers are certainly welcome. But that doesn't mean they're exempt from using the forums search feature every once in awhile ... given the surplus of recent threads on the issue.

Last week in another similar discussion, one of the Ashes Mods said Beta was the appropriate time for review and discussion on animations. We haven't even begun Alpha-2 yet (hopefully the OP is reading the entire thread).

Noaani

arsnn wrote: »

Maybe it´s been a lack of talent/competence in that area or technical stuff compatibility issues with some aspects like IK animations or notifiers

This is entirely possible - but then, why would you hire the people you want for finishing touches before you are ready for those finishing touches?

Regardless of whether they have the ability on staff right now, these are the kinds of things that need to be done near the end of development, not years out.

You work on those finishing touches when you know you have the basic general movements of each animation sorted. Any work done to finish an animation that is then discarded is wasted work.

McMackMuck

I love to see people show some passion and speak up about aspects of Ashes that they aren't happy with, especially if they acknowledge that the game is in Alpha. For me, it reads like a list of things they would hope to be addressed by the end of Alpha 2. Sometimes there's a counter opinion, but for the most part

In the December 2021 UE5 walkthrough there's a point where Steven jumps down from an overhang, turns around and looks up briefly to see a visual effect of the triffids (is that their name?) glitching through the solid rock scenery. There's plenty of released games out there with worse visual glitches, but I would hope that kind minor visual infidelity would be removed from Ashes in one of the later passes.

I'd expect that most if not all animations will be improved before and during Alpha2 test phases. @Jahlon mentioned a great idea the other day; when more Archetypes are prepared resurrect Apoc as a testing environment for combat, give players/teams set character builds/load-outs and generate feedback for what works and what doesn't.

arsnn

Noaani wrote: »

arsnn wrote: »

Maybe it´s been a lack of talent/competence in that area or technical stuff compatibility issues with some aspects like IK animations or notifiers

This is entirely possible - but then, why would you hire the people you want for finishing touches before you are ready for those finishing touches?

Regardless of whether they have the ability on staff right now, these are the kinds of things that need to be done near the end of development, not years out.

You work on those finishing touches when you know you have the basic general movements of each animation sorted. Any work done to finish an animation that is then discarded is wasted work.

I dont quite where the perspective comes from that combat is about "finishing touches".
Combat is the most central, tactile and time absorbing gameplay loop of any mmo.
You do have to build your entire PvE experience that is by far biggest development batch around your combat system.
And im not talking about add some abilities pre-launch, they are not even close to how the fundament of their combat works.

AncientIncant wrote: »

@arsnn

arsnn wrote: »

Prototyping for 1 year with hardly any changes and depth of tools you can utilize is kinda ..?

The assumption you’ve made that has led you astray is that Alpha-1 was their most current build.

As a result, you’ve opened the door for yourself to believe you can deduce the state of combat behind closed doors.

The deduction comes from the my impression that intrepid utilizes any kind of progress to market their project. Which is entirely ok.
They would never have released that alpha combat if the had something better on their hand.
This would mean that Intrepid would have given us a combat system to test thoroughly and then scrap it anyway?

There is a build that they are working on in the last few months, for which i dont have any infos.
This build goes in the right direction as i did show with my 2 clips.

Noaani

arsnn wrote: »

And im not talking about add some abilities pre-launch, they are not even close to how the fundament of their combat works.

Yeah, and they are 3 years or so away from release.

A combat system isn't a thing you just add in one go. You get some basics in game and you refine and expand, then you refine and expand, then you refine and expand.

Intrepid do have the fundamentals. They just need to refine and expand on them.

Marcet

The problem is not the animations in this stage, the problem is people blindly defending IS and shutting down any kind of questions about it. I asked for someone with knowledge on the subject to explain when is a good time to start working on the animations.
The responses i got were:

"How you dare talk about this?"
"This is alpha"
"Don't talk about this"
"This is alpha"
"Leave it to the professionals"

This forum community always concescending and truly hurtful for the game. Stop shutting down questions and constructive criticism.

daveywavey

Marcet wrote: »

The problem is not the animations in this stage, the problem is people blindly defending IS and shutting down any kind of questions about it. I asked for someone with knowledge on the subject to explain when is a good time to start working on the animations.
The responses i got were:

"How you dare talk about this?"
"This is alpha"
"Don't talk about this"
"This is alpha"
"Leave it to the professionals"

This forum community always concescending and truly hurtful for the game. Stop shutting down questions and constructive criticism.

The problem is that what you perceive as "constructive criticism" was actually "You're doing it wrong, Intrepid. I think you should be doing it like this. And, I've absolutely no clue about this and have nothing to back it up."

Your phrase was: "I honestly don't know much about game design"

So, why should your "constructive criticism" be worth anything on this one particular topic? It's as pointless as my idea of what they should work on, cos I've no experience of game design either.

It's absolutely worth something when you're answering their questions in the Dev Discussions and the like, but when you're telling them that they're doing their job wrong, and you have no evidence or experience to back that up, that isn't "constructive criticism". It's just plain unhelpful.

You got plenty of reasonable answers, which you've clearly chosen to ignore since you think you only got the above answers. Your question was even answered before you asked it. It's people like you that have made Steven have to say before every single video: "This is just current alpha animations, it's not the final thing!"

Marcet

Yes, I said "I don't know much about game design" to make clear my own opinion is based on ignorance, because im asking for answers for everyone! answers from someone who really knows about this stuff.
Not you telling me to shut up for asking something, alright dude?

Tulima

If you need experience in game design to give constructive criticism, then the vast majority of this forum should stay quiet.

As OP seems to understand it's an alpha, they may criticize as much as they like.

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