Animation Feedback

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Lopretni wrote:

The Witch.

I hate her idle/walking animations. They way she's stooped over.

When you have a metal helmet on her, she looks like she should be in a class for the mentally challenged.

I'm not saying she needs to be some hyper sexualized thing. I mean, I'm gay, I really could care less. But could she carry herself a little less like Quasimodo?

This. Not only she's a hunchback, but all her animations are very masculine. She doesn't feel like a woman. Just look at her trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBNFmQYKzo4

0:18, the way she walks. Have you ever seen a girl walking this way?:) Her running animation isn't any better. Women carry their boddies very differently than men do, and these animations don't reflect that.

I kind of like the fact she is slightly creepy and not sexy in the beginning, but I'd love to see her evolve into magnificent powerfull angel of vengeance who is feared and loved in the same time, and these animations (and gear) just don't cut it. She is the same poor creepy girl on 50lvl as she is when she steps on Wraeclast for the first time.

Duelist is a intersting melee fighter as anyother character, however,I feel like he misses an agressive unique range attack or animation for a skill? Like a "Sonic Boom" or "Sonic blast" from "Dragon Force"(it's a Sega Saturn old game to those who don't know it,if you need to get an idea) would be kind of cool for this game,ofc every other character should had one unique skill too,like he could only use it when he meet some specific conditions.

To those intersting of what i'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlpwCL2G6us
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I just want to add I think that a lot of animations need to be re-thought and redone or adjusted. Attack animations can seem...clunky (?) and walking/running animations just seem...somewhat off.

That is all!

from what i have seen i would say that the animation on this game is excellent!(considering that it is in beta stage). the movement of characters is great and i like the animations of various skills and the movement of AI.

More than anything I guess I'd just like to see a variety of animations for each character/weapon combination, as well as a new animation or two for each enemy type added before full release. It'd give the game that extra bit of polish that it needs to pull people in.

This was mentionned elsewhere but perhaps better posted here:

Could you normalize the animation speed for opening containers?

It's very snappy and responsive to left click on a chests, and of course to use an AOE skill on a bunch of barrels.

But when you want to kick a lone barrel or crate the animation feels much slower and there is a delay before the items appear on the ground, which kind of halts the fast flow of the game.

Thanks!

the only feedback that i can give so far is that the auto attack animations seem clunky and slow. I play a ranger and the kiting seems a little clunky from the time u are running away to the time you can turn around and auto attack seems kind of slow it would be nice if it were touched up to be more smooth and react faster.

I'm playing a Marauder and trying to create something akin to a Diablo2 frenzy barbarian.

The dual wield animation for the "default attack" is wimpy. There are two specific problems I see:
His attack is very "horizontal"
I went back and watched some Diablo2 animations, and the dual-wield swings are pretty much "over hand chopping wildly". IE: like a drummer. Current animation is more like a row.

His attack is a very limited range of motion.
He only swings the sword maybe 30 degrees. This creates the illusion of very slow attack speed, because the sword does not have to cover much distance in the second or so the animation lasts. Needs a "wind up" and "follow through" to add some zoom.

This economy of motion might be a good fit for the duelist, and honestly probably makes sense from a realistic perspective (flailing wildly is probably a good way to get yourself killed). But for the Marauder specifically, it does not fit his style.

I find using "Heavy Strike" Skill Gem improves the animation. Maybe consider a variation of that for the default item. Like, minus the red swirl or whatever.

Two-handed animations, in general, are lacking. From the look of it, my Shadow is basically giving love-taps to the monsters with his big-ass club.

There's no wind-up, swing, and follow-through to the animation. Explanation:

When you swing a sledgehammer, you have the initial wind-up where you're building kinetic energy, gathering the strength for a forceful blow.

Then you swing. This is the fastest phase. You've built up the kinetic energy and are now adding momentum to the swing.

Then there's the impact. That's where all that kinetic energy is transferred from the sledgehammer into the object you just struck. There's the slightest pause to allow this transfer of energy to happen.

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As it is, the 2H animations aren't reflecting this. To sum it up, it appears that the character is touching the enemy with the weapon, rather than swinging it and letting the weapon impact on the enemy.

Melee attack animations need to be tuned to be more in line with how Heavy Blow currently is - a big, rapid swing with the character's weight behind it then a short follow-through animation.

This gives the illusion of speed and force. For example, in DotA2, Spectre used to have an attack animation much like how it is in PoE - she swung her energy disk at a constant speed, there was no acceleration for impact and transfer/loss of force in the backswing. Her attack felt weak. It scaled well late game, but for much of game it just looked like she was just flexing her arm back and forth, not slaughtering enemies. Then Valve simply tuned her animation to have that sense of impact, and now she feels much more powerful.

I hate to use Dragon Age 2 as an example, but they took that idea to the extreme, having a swift, forceful attack animation and a pause made combat very visceral and interesting, as opposed to Dragon Age: Origins which had a much slower pace with it's slow animations.

I believe that adjusting the animations to be focused around that point of impact would increase the pace of PoE and make it feel much more visceral and violent.