Do you still feel the movement is a little stiff?

Arrowheade

The previous Warrior Greatsword demo video had the same feel, and was still a bit stiff in movement and combat.

In the latest archer demo video, we can see that the archer is a little stiff in jumping and moving, although it feels much better than the warrior.

I hope to continue to improve the action mechanism and look forward to the arrival of Alpha 2.

（Off topic, when will the Alpha 2 be announced, I can't wait.）

have a nice day everyone.

arsnn

I had the opposite impression. For me the ranger dodge role and the jumping felt stiff, while the i did not notice anything in the melee combat video

Solmyr

To me it just looks like a lack of dedicated transition animations.

Look at the Monster Hunter series for a great example of transitional/contextual animation. In those games, whether you're turning 180 degrees during a sprint, running down a steep hill, or slowing to a stop from a run, there's a unique animation for it that blends smoothly with all the others. Pretty much every common locomotive scenario is covered.

There are other less traditional methods of making things look smooth, like the dynamically-blended mocap stuff you see in some AAA titles like For Honor or any modern Rockstar game, but I don't know much about those, and it doesn't seem to be the direction Ashes is going anyway.

I animate professionally and know full well how insanely complicated this is to pull off, so I don't blame them for not having super polished state machines right out the gate, but I hope it's something they continue to iterate on and improve.

WHIT3ROS3

Of course. I wouldn't expect them to feel super smooth at this point as to have final, fully optimised and polished abilities would be a complete waste of time, money, and effort, if you plan to go in and change anything substantial about it.

What I would say to Intrepid is "you got it". Of course, there will be balancing and general moaning going forward. But you got it down. The Sword, Duel Daggers, Long/Short Bow (and I'm guessing the Wand as that was pretty stable) are all looking good, fun abilities, nice speed etc. Now that you have this, run with it. Start packing out the abilities which can then lead to final iterations, optimisation and polish.

Songcaller

They are still or have only recently finished the racial models. The skill moves are also being fleshed out. Smoothness is the last aspect to fix or you will be smoothing everything out multiple times.

CROW3

Just my 2 cents, I wouldn’t look at the Ranger video versus a completed game. Ashes is still in a true alpha state with no optimizations. If you look at the Ranged clip compared to the Melee clip, you’ll see how this iteration of the game is smoother, more detailed, with far more environmental effects enabled.

Asgerr

I don't think they've completed any animations, less so the walking or jumping or dodging animations.

I half expect that they'll work on that last, once they've settled 100% on a direction for the character concepts and models. Probably every race will have some measure of distinct animations in walking and jumping and the like.

Arrowheade

Noaani

My expectation - as it seems is the expectation of many - is that Intrepid will develop the base animations first, and then work on the transition animations.

Until those transition animations are in their final form, movement will feel odd.

Sathrago

if you saw any stiffness, I blame steven. overall the movement felt smooth and the animations did what they were supposed to do.

I know steven is busy, very busy, but it would be nice if he spent more time practicing the game a bit so we can fully engage with the experience instead of, "Lul sorry guys i havent tried this yet and havent played an mmo in years. teehee i have godmode on." Its good fun, I just wish it was driven better on the game side.

Heartbeat

I believe Steven has commented on something like this in the past. It was said that the flow of combat will change as you get better gear, augments, whatever the game has to offer to give you buffs that increase stuff like attack speed, cast speed, movement speed, etc. Pretty much your character will feel better to play the more you adventure and progress. This is a given in MMORPGs pretty much though so i shouldn't even have to bring this up. And these showcases are probably being done with little to no polish, probably just enough polish to even showcase what they are showing us. We're still wondering when the next alpha would be but people are worried about combat being stiff, just trust that Steven was a pretty hardcore gamer himself and he wont let half-baked systems into the game.

And as solmyr said above it could have to do with transition animations but idk anything about those to comment on that.

Liniker

it's normal to look a bit clunky and stiff, it's still in alpha and they already showed how much things can change from one iteration to the next, so I wouldn't worry about it - it's important to focus on the overall direction and design of what is being shown