Animation Feedback

Will we ever get to see anything more then a 1-step animation?

What i mean by this is pathofexile has no character animation/attack animation that is more then a 1-step.



The character always uses the same motion to attack, there is no movement, it is simply a 1-step animation

Frankly this type of animation is extremely basic, in fact they teach animations just like these in beginner college courses....

On the other hand you have possible animations like this

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

Now obviously this is way more advanced but if you look at the action it is multiple step animations

The character moves with the weapon naturally, and has a sort of a combo style mechanic


I feel like one of the biggest things hindering path of exile is the attack animations atm

They are so boring and dull when they could be greatly improved

Literally if you take cleave and you make a build with it, for the entirety of your gameplay experience with cleave you will see one animation and one animation alone


Animations and Attack Animations could greatly be improved

1. A variation, instead of having the character attack with the exact same style the character could cleave from the other direction too and move slightly with each cleave.

2. A combo style animation could be added where the character steps forward and cleaves one time and steps backwards to the return position

3. With multi strike the character could take multiple steps with each cleave allowing for a more fluid and natural combat system


I greatly advise poe to look at black desert online and how they utilize animations and combat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlK-jF6V7rY


Path of exile is also centered around using literally one skill and beefing it up as much as possible

I completely disagree with that design philosophy considering that its extremely restrictive and players should be able to have combinations of skills/gems

Meh i doubt my feedback gets anymore then half a second of someone just barely looking at it as nothing will change.

Over 2 years have passed since my last art feedback and nothing was changed nothing at all - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1113379/page/1#p9403980

A thought i had these days was if it would be possible to make attacks at high attack ratios be blurred by motion blurr. I'm not the first one to point out that it looks kinda stupid if the characters just do this spasmic dance

Also, now that i got one from the the mystery boxes, i'm a bit disappointed by the moving animation of the blood worm. It looks like a kite that gets dragged from the character by an inivisible cord.

Our group of around 50+ people ended up having a big discussion about why most in the group tends to drift away from PoE and towards other games. There were some varying reasons, but there were two things we could all agree upon. One of them has to do with animation, so I'll leave this here.

In short, you never really FEEL badass in PoE. I don't mean about strength of gear. The majority of us are hardcore gamers, and I'd say half of us love min/maxing. It's just that you just don't feel like this unstoppable killing machine that's destroying everything in its wake, even when you are an unstoppable killing machine that's destroying everything in its wake. It just doesn't look...extravagant enough.

1) PoE NEEDS ragdoll physics. Smashing the ground and sending enemy corpses flying is something that needs to happen.

2) The character is too small comparative to the screen. I realize that even now there are a lot of skills that kills off-screen so much that you never actually see enemies dying, but it really doesn't matter. Just try playing PoE with the zoom scrolled in one tick of the mouse wheel. You instantly feel bigger and more intimidating. It's not even a short term thing either. Even after a week of playing and getting used to the ever-so-slightly zoomed in view, it will still feel so much better than before. For the most part, it's not a hindrance to my gameplay...for the most part.

Before you say "well, you can always just play zoomed in"...no, that's not the correct mindset. Most people are playing withe the screen zoomed out all the way. Even if it does make the game look less appealing, there's just a strategic advantage to doing so. The core of this game is about min/maxing, and gimping yourself to make the game look better is not actually a choice for most people. Get rid of the biggest zoomed out view and make the next tick down the new default view.

Hell, I'm actually one of the few that DO play zoomed in one tick down for the visual appeal. However, I'm constantly reminded if I might have been able to avoid that random fireball that killed me if I had been zoomed out all the way.

If people start complaining again about needing a bigger zoom out option, then that's a problem with every other thing in the game that makes the players feel that way.

"

North2 wrote:

1) PoE NEEDS ragdoll physics. Smashing the ground and sending enemy corpses flying is something that needs to happen.

Really? have you seen tech forum side and all the technical issues the game already has? or even half of this thread which basically can be mowed down to ''Character animations need much more variety and ''uniqueness''?
I don't want random corpses flying around,most of the times,especially in groups,you already have more clutter than you can deal with. It might sound cool in theory,but in reality it would suck.

It's not D3,most of us ''hardcore'' gamers prefer game-play quality over a damn (example) SRS pinata blowing up on screen whenever something explodes in middle of already huge clutter.

As for the zoom: It's not destroy and search sort-of deal,most people already have issues with the zoom not being far out enough,i personally am not one of them,but seeing how most builds work,and the stuff you do/get done to you by other sources,anything less than what we got right now would make at least 3 dozen builds instantly essentially removed from the game,simply because you wouldn't be able to see anything,now add your rag-dolls on top and you will be seeing a huge spike in diablo player-base increase.


I am all in for everyone who keeps suggesting revamp/polish of most/all of the character animations,because right now just to give you an example: The widely-accepted best/most powerful 2h sword animation is on....witch,while at the same time most other characters wielding 2h sword in combat looks as if they are holding a giant thin dildo.

It also pisses me off how marauders hold 2h axes/maces when he is running,would look far more appealing if he would be holding them over his shoulder with a single hand,given a proper animation it would also make the ''race'' look much more powerful and bulky,which was always the intention for something like a marauder.

The devil is in detail,or in this case polish and variety. I understand the lack,because we have almost the same exact animations now that PoE had way back in beta,but the game is clearly doing more than good enough,so i don't see a reason for not changing the animations altogether,or adding much more variety.

First. Please consider diffrent stances for all characters depending where they are. I just love the marauder standing on log-screen. This is just stance that I want him look like whenever he is in town (neutral place). But I would change that thing when he hits self in face with maul. Maybe just rise his arm with weapon and hang it on his shoulder. Maybe just rise weapon and gesture. And maybe just gesture ? Whatever. But the point is to make diffrent stances in town, when characters should just stand or walk, gesture, shake weapons, make lazy moves. And of course diffrend stance when he go to fight. And this is the real pain in PoE. Almost every build uses one or two main skills that are animated the same way and THIS should be changed as quick as possible !

Fighting system animation can be solved by adding more varriation to every single move. For example:

1) Character should move diffrent with shield or 2-handed weapon.
2) Character has diffrent stance when equiped shield using Cleave with main hand and diffrent stance when using the same skill with dual wielding or 2-handed weap.
3) Character has diffrent animation when taking damage:
a) falling on ground (not like dying but similiar) when taking critical hit
b) moving backward and losing control for while when taking hit in aggresive stance like dual wield or 2-handed weapons.
c) standing still in defensive stance (with shield) when blocking any atack.
4) Character uses few varriations of the same skill with diffrent angles.

What else can make great improvement in animation are combo moves. For me Torchlight has really nice fighting system that is worth of look at. This is just crazy when you don't spam one buton all the time but you make basic hit, then press second moving forward skill wich let you releasse the last one jumping attack and most powerfull.

For example when dual vielding:

a) cleave with lef hand weapon -> variation of cleave with second hand and step in forward -> then leap slam in this direction with -> ground slam with warcry that is applied to last combo move instantly. To make this player must press: 1,1,2,3
b) heavy strike with main hand -> cleave with second hand -> leap slam with both weapons.
For every combo move character can benefit from bonuses like +endu/power charges or other things.


In my opinion PoE is the best h&s type game with or withouh this freaking animations but this is why it deserves for upgrade. Good luck guys and thank you !

Ps. Yes, the base stance is too wide a little. And please change tabularasa look like shirt. I can't watch templar the old man indeed looking so horny.

As long as the duelist still does his fabulous twirl when leap slamming with a 2h sword, I'm happy.

Templars rly need some love, its by far the worst character animations in the game. Spell Cast animation (all classes) needs better inspirations too. I would love to see Grim Dawn's Aether Ray animation with Scorching Ray or even some AoE skills like flameblast.

U guys have made so much awesome wings recently, but Unfornately just like the other wings before them, they look so much great and natural until the character MOVE, yup! Movement destroy everything from the wings, while the character is moving, the wings look so freaking blocky, just like a piece of carton which was stuck to the character's back by super glue and look unnatural so far, as you can see in the case of DECIDE WING (either the other wings). So how to make them look to be natural? You have to give them the right to do what they're made to do: FLY. Yeah! you guys need FLYING ANNIMATION for our characters, let the wings drive the character not the character drive the wings. Consulting from the other games which have the great FLYING ANNIMATION is appreciate, EXP: MU Webzen. Thanks for reading, hope to see Flying Exiles fulfil the sky in the near future!!!

Many melee attacks (like Heavy Strike) only have a single attack animation and would look much better if they had a few different ones they could play, either in sequence (e.g. swing left -> swing to right -> repeat) or randomly (e.g. overhead swing/horizontal swing/diagonal swing). Perhaps even a combination of the two. The default attack does have some variation so I hope it's possible to share this with other melee skills.

Regarding the fancy wings we can add, they'd look even better if they were mildly affected by physics. Not as much as full cloth cloaks, but many of the wings do look like they should flow behind us a bit due to their light frames plus wind resistance.

Similarly, it would be cool if character's hair had some physics too, particularly the Witch's hair.

EDIT: Come to think of it, more physics in general would be welcome. There's another ARPG called Marvel Heroes, and while that game has a lot of problems it does use physics well on many of its characters. Scarlet Witch's Romani costume has physics on her hair, cape and long loincloth all at once. Emma Frost and Storm both have huge capes with physics in their default costumes.

I guess Marvel Heroes has an easier time of it because they licensed Unreal Engine 3, but as Path of Exile's engine evolves I hope our characters here could play with that stuff some day!

One thing I have noticed is that faster movement uses animation exactly the same way (same distance between footsteps) that slower movement does. This looks and "feels" silly - faster movement should have longer footsteps.

I am not quite sure technically how this could be achieved - you perhaps do need some animation speed up also? But, for example, perhaps there could be two animations - a short stride one and a longer stride one - and the animation used could average (or interpolate) between them (perhaps along with some kind of timing alteration to make things "look right" - I'd have to spend some time watching people walk, jog and/or run to say much more, though).

Or, maybe just have a few animations for different speeds and switch between them for different speed ranges??