Animation Feedback

I think the animations are superb apart from a few nit-picks. For example, if i place the cursor close to my character while running, the animations starts to stutter and it looks like he is stumbling. Maybe add a new animation for when he is walking and change the speed, then as the cursor moves outwards increase the speed and change the animation to the current running one.

As for the crabs with those shells, please decrease the animation time as it is quite frustrating having to wait for it to finish before you can smash the critter into pieces again :)
EDIT: I meant decrease, not increase lol.

As for the 4 legged animals, such as the tigers or whatever they are that players encounter in Act 1, they need smoother animations when turning. Currently the entire model just pivots, there is no smooth bending of the body. It looks really strange when they suddenly stop running, pivot 180 degrees and then pivot back.

Other than these things the animations are great. However i would like the major bosses to have more interesting death animations, not just to the actual boss model, but to the environments as well. Think of Andariel in Diablo 2, when she died the entire place started to shake, chuncks of the building started collapsing everywhere and fire spewed out as she screamed in pain and collapsed.

Crabs - I agree that when the crab drops it's shell, the animation should be much quicker. Or another solution could be it splits in half and the you can still attack while the shell falls to the ground.

Marauder - I have only played till level 5 with my Marauder, but I wonder if adding some camera shake with critical hits would add a nice weight to it.

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jmackay wrote:

Crabs - I agree that when the crab drops it's shell, the animation should be much quicker. Or another solution could be it splits in half and the you can still attack while the shell falls to the ground.

Marauder - I have only played till level 5 with my Marauder, but I wonder if adding some camera shake with critical hits would add a nice weight to it.

Sounds like a reasonable animation upgrade, maybe something of this sort for all classes.

yep e crit effects animations.... i remember titan quest having great crit animations and effects, while more recently, darkspore had those big, numbers and exploding enemies if e crit was a killing blow...

Zombies: Look good, but some of the swing animations look unatural, arms bending like spaghetti.
Cursed Spawn: Look cool, but I think their tentacles should move more while they're "walking." Right now they look like they're sort of gliding along the terrain.
Skeleton Archers (same with the Callous Snipers): The strings on their bows aren't being drawn back before they fire off their arrows. And when they do draw their strings back, I think they should lean back. Right now they just bounce up and down while shooting arrows.
Skeletons in general: The animations look a tad stiff. But that may be because they're skeletons...
Scavengers: I think their animations need to be tightened up in general. They look too loose and floaty. I think their arms and legs need to move faster. And the way they attack is unimpressive, partly due to them bending their wrists. It looks like they're trying to slap you instead of kill you.
Goatmen: Their legs are moving too slowly. I also think something needs to be done to their leap to make it more powerful looking. For instance, having them crouch/kneel more quickly, and then having them push off faster. Right now, they just don't seem like they're giving it their al when they leap.
Hellions: The legs and attacks look too stiff and the animations too short (especially the attack).
Ghosts: The walking animation looks too slow relative to its movement speed, but that may be intentional since they're ghosts.
Blood Ape (little monkeys): Some of their attack animations make their arms look like spaghetti.
Bone Crushers/Behemoths: I think they should look a little more lumbering. I think they're too stiff and light on the feet.
Kraitlyn's Elite (the melee mercenaries): Their head and torso are too stiff while running.

Also, my Templar's two-handed attacks seem to lack punch. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think it might have to do with his back foot never moving when he swings.

And I think something should be done with the curb stomp/kicking animation for looting rocks, corpses, etc. Using the same kicking/stomping animation for looting barrels, rocks, altars, etc., doesn't look right. My suggestion is to use the kicking animation (or just a melee animation) when the character is breaking something open, and to use no animation for looting things like bodies.

Finally, I've noticed that some of the monster's feet/hands clip through the terrain.

There's too much movement in the Ranger's idle stance. She looks like she should be in Street Fighter.

The only thing that stuck out at me was the stone golem type monsters seemed to waddle, like their knees couldn't bend and were just pivoting their body on each foot to walk.

So far I have no gripes about the Ranger, just got to cruel dificulty. I am not sure about melee classes, though I feel like those animations would need to be more smooth to look realistic from what I see in the videos.

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Matt1128Y wrote:

And I think something should be done with the curb stomp/kicking animation for looting rocks, corpses, etc. Using the same kicking/stomping animation for looting barrels, rocks, altars, etc., doesn't look right. My suggestion is to use the kicking animation (or just a melee animation) when the character is breaking something open, and to use no animation for looting things like bodies.

Completely agree. I didn't pay much attention to the animations, but stomping on corpse to roll them over, well, that catched my eye from the very beginning. It looks totally unnatural, especially when the corpse reacts with a delay ,and I don't think it's because of bad latency (ping 150-200ms). The kicking/stomping animation definitely needs to be redone.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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dust7 wrote:

Opinions ranged from "looks a bit chunky" to "everything moves like a wet towel".

Most characters feel a little slow in the beginning. Once you get some passives and equipment that can boost your attack and movement speeds then things feel a lot better.

I know that. I merely stated the immediate reaction of the majority of people I showed PoE videos.