The uncertain direction of animations

Before I start, I am aware that the animations are either placeholder or not tuned but I came across a comment when watching the recent showcase for the tank skills which kind of hits the head of the nail for me.

The comment was the following:
"I'm really looking forward to Ashes but the animations seem quite disappointing all round to me, the movements seem really inhuman, disjointed or impractical and it dose not seem to be an issue with them being unfinished or placeholder. The main concern for me seems to be down primarily to artistic direction or lack of it. The decisions made and the thinking behind the culmination of these animations worries me. I feel like the animation department needs new leadership and quickly. A cohesive direction needs to be made and enforced.
These animations are all over the place, a unified design philosophy is what is missing. As it stands this seems like inexperienced forced spectacle and there is little more cringe educing."

I don't want to be negative or like some people would call it, "being picky", but I truly share the concerns of this comment.

I just wanted to create a discussion to see what other people think about the subject.

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Comments

Sathrago

I think after watching the latest gameplay we can agree they are responding to feedback in a positive light and have improved the animations greatly since this thread was created. It looked quite fluid for such an early rendition and steven being a really, really old guy who has never played an mmo before

Songcaller

I think the combat (duels) highlighted the major flaws in fact. The mage got smashed by a melee because the mage couldn't move and cast. Not to mention the stun locks the Tank could hand out. I don't know what combat you watched to say it was smoother, but, one ranged class getting stomped by melee (Which I've said would happen in an earlier post) doesn't make for smooth gameplay or fun gameplay.

dewan58

Neurath wrote: »

I think the combat (duels) highlighted the major flaws in fact. The mage got smashed by a melee because the mage couldn't move and cast. Not to mention the stun locks the Tank could hand out. I don't know what combat you watched to say it was smoother, but, one ranged class getting stomped by melee (Which I've said would happen in an earlier post) doesn't make for smooth gameplay or fun gameplay.

This is a thread about the animations and not about how the combat plays. A melee overpowering a caster class is a combat balance problem, and not an animation one.

Sathrago

Neurath wrote: »

I think the combat (duels) highlighted the major flaws in fact. The mage got smashed by a melee because the mage couldn't move and cast. Not to mention the stun locks the Tank could hand out. I don't know what combat you watched to say it was smoother, but, one ranged class getting stomped by melee (Which I've said would happen in an earlier post) doesn't make for smooth gameplay or fun gameplay.

I could see myself setting up quite a fluid combat with the correct keybinds for the mage. Steven is just really, really bad atm. He has CC but missed it or freaked out and didnt cast at all. He keyboard turned and basically was worse than an npc in that fight. Like Dewan58 said, this thread though is about the animations themselves and I believe they have done a good job working towards better iterations.

Songcaller

Static abilities are an animation issue because of animation locks. I've made reference to it in an earlier post.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased they adapted the fireball animation.

Dreoh

Neurath wrote: »

I think the combat (duels) highlighted the major flaws in fact. The mage got smashed by a melee because the mage couldn't move and cast. Not to mention the stun locks the Tank could hand out. I don't know what combat you watched to say it was smoother, but, one ranged class getting stomped by melee (Which I've said would happen in an earlier post) doesn't make for smooth gameplay or fun gameplay.

Well actually the mage could move and cast, you literally just watched a bad player (sorry Steven) get destroyed by good players and came to the conclusion that the class Steven was playing was bad because of it.

maouw

Actually, if you look again, you'll notice that Steven was moving while casting fireball.

I could see what Steven was trying to do: black hole + spam spells, and it was good to see him trying to tele out of the fight.
Really interested to see how combat develops from here!

Songcaller

Nah man, I've had to rewatch it to glean what you are saying. I know the moves are all level 10 and below but the moves are either static or make the mage slow to a crawl. Either way, the melee dominated. I cut short my assessments because some people claim I'm off topic. I don't want to make a new topic though. In my mind, the animations are the cause of the problems. It does not help that Steven was slow to respond and out of practice but the moments where the tank didn't use knock down and stuns was painful to watch. Even the knock downs and stuns were painful to watch but for other reasons.

Edit: Sometimes the mage moves and casts because of the black hole effects. Though when the other dev switch to mage you could see the lightning wasn't static. Makes me hopefully for a lightning Bard/Mage.

Dreoh

Neurath wrote: »

Nah man, I've had to rewatch it to glean what you are saying. I know the moves are all level 10 and below but the moves are either static or make the mage slow to a crawl. Either way, the melee dominated. I cut short my assessments because some people claim I'm off topic. I don't want to make a new topic though. In my mind, the animations are the cause of the problems. It does not help that Steven was slow to respond and out of practice but the moments where the tank didn't use knock down and stuns was painful to watch. Even the knock downs and stuns were painful to watch but for other reasons.

Edit: Sometimes the mage moves and casts because of the black hole effects. Though when the other dev switch to mage you could see the lightning wasn't static. Makes me hopefully for a lightning Bard/Mage.

I just rewatched the footage and yes, when casting you are slowed by what looks to be something around 50%, but being slowed while casting isn't something crazy. It's possible you mistook the slow effect he had on him during the duels right before he died at one point as a casting slow when it is pretty clear if you look that he was not casting anything and literally just backing up.

Now I agree that the tanks had a lot of CC at lvl 10 compared to the mages, but this is also only lvl 10 combat. Lvl 50 mages might have a much more comparable toolkit to lvl 50 tanks in that way.

ariatras

The latest videos, especially what the design team mentioned about player agency gave me hope. Until I saw Steven being chain CC'd and that was just by a single player. CC abilities need to be toned down imo.

Dreoh

Also keep in mind that they are not balancing for 1v1 at all

Noaani

Dreoh wrote: »

Also keep in mind that they are not balancing for 1v1 at all

And even if they were, they wouldn't be balancing combat for another two years...

Blandmarrow

ariatras wrote: »

The latest videos, especially what the design team mentioned about player agency gave me hope. Until I saw Steven being chain CC'd and that was just by a single player. CC abilities need to be toned down imo.

They're not balancing anything right now, abilities having too much damage/duration or whatever is not important as of now.

The fact that fireball did not even do 100 damage and melee swings did roughly 300 says everything.

Sathrago

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

The latest videos, especially what the design team mentioned about player agency gave me hope. Until I saw Steven being chain CC'd and that was just by a single player. CC abilities need to be toned down imo.

They're not balancing anything right now, abilities having too much damage/duration or whatever is not important as of now.

The fact that fireball did not even do 100 damage and melee swings did roughly 300 says everything.

Yeah people have to understand that the first cracks at these abilities are just how "powerful" the designers project them to be in comparison to other abilities within that sole archetype. Once they have an idea of which abilities will be big hitters, fillers, etc. They will start balancing the damage and healing across the archetypes.

arsnn

Yesterday’s live stream was a really positive sign for the future.
I still think the animation are drawn out too long atm. The entirety of the fireball casting animation took about 1.5seconds, somewhere around 0.8 seconds seems to be a better spot for me.
But this also depends on the alternatives the mage will offer in his class kit.

But more importantly they announced a dev discussion on combat! Now the experts of this thread can show stupid intrepid how it’s done.

Well i‘ll probably spam them with animation references and some class kit mechanics.

daveywavey

Quite surprised no-one's mentioned the huge compass thing, yet!

Blandmarrow

daveywavey wrote: »

Quite surprised no-one's mentioned the huge compass thing, yet!

What does the VFX have to do with goofy animations?

ariatras

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

The latest videos, especially what the design team mentioned about player agency gave me hope. Until I saw Steven being chain CC'd and that was just by a single player. CC abilities need to be toned down imo.

They're not balancing anything right now, abilities having too much damage/duration or whatever is not important as of now.

The fact that fireball did not even do 100 damage and melee swings did roughly 300 says everything.

Oh, I know. Most of the stuns were knockdowns from what I could tell. And like I said, hearing the devs speak about fluidity and animations not taking player's control away from them. It made me very happy and hopeful. Especially since they listened to feedback threads like this in that regard. And much like animations in many cases, when talking about crowd-control. The same is true. Less is more.

Goatrek

Neurath wrote: »

The animations themselves are long winded and animation locked. I do not mind an animation lock for some skills, there will be no animation cancelling though so every active skill will be a chore. You can animation lock while allowing movement. Animation lock and static abilities do not blend well together.

This right here summarizes my biggest concern with AoC. And if its true theres no animation cancelling thats a HUGE negative in terms of how the combat will feel. Especially if combined with all these god damned "float up into the air over-the-top animation cycles".

After playing WoW I cant go back to an MMO where the agency over my character and the responsiveness of skills and movement are worse. Blizzard really set the bar for me right from the get go 2004 with how exact their animations for movement and spells were. And the 3 friends i will be trying AoC with share these same feelings for what its worth.

Marcet

In my opinion, characters move too fast and their feet doesnt match the ground at all, I would reduce the speed by 10% minimum.

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