Animation Feedback

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ManiaCCC wrote:

Hello Ari,

I like a lot of work in PoE..some animations are great but I know for you it's more useful when we tell you, what we don't like.

I am doing some rigs and animations too so I know how complicated is makes everything right. But I have one specific thing I really don't like.

I believe characters are lacking a "hit and impact" feel. While good swing animations are important, what I miss are proper aggressive looking battle stances. I think you shouldn't be afraid to exaggerated these stances a bit. Both my templar and duelist just don't have this "I am ready to fight feel" ... They both seems to be just walking in some LalalalaLAND and sometimes beat something with stick over the head.

This is probably my biggest issue with animations. I really believe you should really try exaggerated battle stance at least for one character and try it how it feels.. In long run, it will be worth.

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permaximum wrote:

In my humble opinion, large overhaul of monster death animations along with hit reactions, strong squishy sound and making melee attacks just a little bit quicker would do wonders.

I think focusing on and improving upon character attack animations wouldn't really change things because of the result will be the same anyway (monster death animation). Also when I consider the fact that you're the only animator Ari, getting everything right this far into the development sounds almost impossible.

So, I vote for changed monster death animations instead of improved character weapon swing, movement animations.

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SinisterDexter wrote:

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Ari wrote:

If you have any specific monster death animations that bother you please list them and i'll go through and tweak what i can.

It's a little silly for Infernal Blow to blow skeletons up into a bunch of blood and guts. (Also Detonate Corpse on skeleton corpses.)

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SinisterDexter wrote:

Same goes for the big rock dudes, by the way.

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__Z__ wrote:

the only thing I really miss is the Block Shield or weapon block animation.
if there's one i've never managed to see it.

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dust7 wrote:

I like the design of the new snake monsters in act 2, but their animations seem really clunky to me.

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Killas900 wrote:

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.

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Neonexe wrote:

Ari I believe in you!

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Nphyx wrote:

My first impressions (after having played for a week and clearing the first difficulty with multiple characters) are that the humanoid animations tend to be a little stiff and mechanical, but not unforgivable for an indie game that (presumably) doesn't have access to high-end mocap equipment.

The one thing that has really been bugging me are the default stances for several of the character classes. The witch appears to have cerebral palsy, the marauder is quite obviously stoned, and the templar (perhaps understandably, given his age) has a prominent beer gut and bad posture. I haven't played the other classes long enough to form opinions, but first impressions of the ranger are good.

I get that you're trying to give them personality that goes beyond the classical heroic stereotypes and four color comic poses of other games, but these three seem almost, I don't know, pathetic. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here; this is just the impression that comes to me when playing them.

Of the three the witch needs the most improvement. She's been harassed, abused, beat down, denigrated, and finally exiled because of her nature and beliefs; but that doesn't make her gollum or the hunchback of Notre Dame. I imagine instead that she habitually keeps her head down, slouches a bit, allows her limbs to hang limply, avoids eye contact, maybe even has minor nervous ticks like looking over her shoulder frequently or chewing her nails. Maybe her offensive animations should seem halfhearted or timid, and her defensive animations over-exaggerated (throwing her hands over her head to block or a clumsy sideways lurch for a dodge). In other words, she in particular should express symptoms of post-traumatic stress, whereas presently she just looks diseased, physically disabled, or possibly stereotypically "insane".

I'm not sure what you're going for with the marauder. Is he carefree, overconfident, detached, or just dumb? He seems to stare off into space, unaware of his environment and clearly not ready for action. In any case his idle animations don't strike me as those of a trained warrior so much as, perhaps, an unskilled laborer. I'm not a big fan of the hypermasculine tough guy ex-marine thing that your typical warrior or soldier is modeled after, but it seems to me that he should demonstrate *some* kind of discipline or instinct.

The templar might not be wrong at all, but he strikes me as very carefree and jovial, the way a guy might stand and behave at a barbeque after a few too many beers. More than anything he immediately made me think of Don Quixote. I'm not sure this jives with his backstory of being this sort of self-righteous holy warrior who has transcended faith and dogma. Should not a person like this express extreme self-confidence, purpose, and certainty in his posture and motions? Or is a stern and humorless priest too much of a stereotype? Maybe I just have the wrong idea about who he's supposed to be.

These idle animations and default poses are the things we see the most in the game, and they tell us the most about who the character is as a person. As such they require great care and attention. If I'm getting the impressions you're intending to give me, then great; you've done well, but I'm not sure I like these people! If not, give them a little more love, and maybe a bit more variety if you can justify the added expense.

As to the rest of the game's animations, I thought many of the monsters were well-done and believable - the snake-, squid-, and ape-like critters in particular felt natural and fluid. Combat feels responsive and gives good visual feedback (if occasionally a little stiff as mentioned before). NPCs and idle monsters strike me as a little lifeless; I'd like them to move around a bit more. But that's normal in video games, I suppose, so can't be called a specific criticism of this one.

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Moist wrote:

something about the maces seems odd. Iunno just seems to swing funny. Or maybe he swings too soft for the blow.