I hate to say this.. but the animations in ESO look absolutely atrocious.. The graphics look amazing.. and so do the characters. However.. the moment the characters move, they look terrible. I really hope that ZOS is planning on polishing all the animations and use motion capture, because right now.. this is making their game look like the 1993 Nightmare Before Christmas animated film. (Don't get me wrong.. this was a good movie.. but animation has come a long way since 1993) The animations need to be much smoother / fluid.. and they only have 4 Months til launch..

I don't mind the movement or combat animations, but some of the casting and other assorted animations leave much to be desired. Definitely one of the game's weakpoints.

THey are just keeping the track record of poor animations in ES games going.

it looks good enough to me..

Nothing stays truer to Elder Scrolls than poor animations. ESPECIALLY jumping animations.

Can someone explain this to me?

Its a really common complaint but I can't say I understand what you mean. :/

Not even disagreeing I guess....but could someone point it out to me? Like give an example compared to a game where you think its not a problem?

I don't mind too much what it looks like. it's what the combat feels like that will determine if I like it or not. but, yeah they animations could be better.

Atrocious? Really? That's a little dramatic I think. Is there room for improvement? Yes, but comparing it to something made in 1993 is ridiculous.

Yes, the animations are shockingly poor for a major game release in this age.

world of warcraft. yeah I said it. it's one of that games stongest points.

Are they not the best animations in the world? Sure, they aren't that great, but people who use sayings like "god awful," or "atrocious" are just being a bit over-the-top. TES games have never had really good animations, it's basically a staple of the series (along with being buggy as hell).

But, there are a few instances where they could make them a bit better (which they have stated they are currently working on them to make them look better (which most MMOs do near launch)). I don't think they are that bad over all though and I can easily live with what they having going with them now.

saying it's ok because past ES games have had poor animations is an invitation for laziness on the developers part. why should we settle for mediocrity? if we let them know we want them improved, they just might improve them. making the game better and the gamers happier.

Word!




Neither do I.
An example with a description of what exactly they don't like would be interesting.

The animations are terrible. Please lets not use past Elder Scrolls games as an example.

That's like saying "yeah, my clothing company has always made bad jeans but we've made bad jeans in the past so it is okay."..lol

This is very subjective. They aren't terrible, but they aren't perfect. They are working on them folks, the product isn't finished yet.

You're right.. they are still working on the game. But there are only 4 months left to Launch and they are going to have to do some MASSIVE optimization to make sure the game runs properly during huge siege battles as seen in the Trailer. You can tell the game isn't optimized and that it will be very hard to play when you are at 10 FPS because there's 100 players on your screen. Optimization alone will probably take the biggest part of the next 4 months... and I suspect that it will not be fully optimized by Launch..

So ZOS should just focus on the graphics and flash and not on the core of the game. The Flash and Graphics will not hold up for a long time. If the game is going to last it needs to focus on the game core and to make it as fun as possible.

What makes you think it will not be fully optimized by launch? And you already negated the naysayers by admitting it is indeed not optimized yet so how about cutting them some slack?

I agree using past games as a crutch isn't a good idea ,but come on people the animations aren't trash or horrid or any other colorful word you could try to use to sway other posters to your way of thinking. It's an unfinished product no ifs, ands or buts.

10 fps, need better rig m8...

They're very static, limited and incomplete. Find something with a bow in particular. The drawing arm more or less just twitches and arrows magically appear and head off in the general direction of the target.

Currently the animations look like they are super trimmed down for performance. They appear to be missing the frames that allow for decent and smooth 'tweening'. I'm hopeful that they will be smoothed out and less 'insect' like at launch.

Back when the alpha footage leaked I would have agreed. They are much better than they were and are in the range of acceptability. Could they be better? Yes, but they're not nearly as bad as some are complaining that they are.

Like I said on the other thread...

I have seen a lot worse animations in some recent games. I don't think TESO's animations are bad at all.

Nothing is perfect, of course. There is always room for improvement, but they certainly aren't horrible.

I don't think my 5 GHZ quad core is a problem... you can tell from their Cyrodil video.. lots of frame rate drops in the big fights. Of course.. the fact they were recording a video may have contributed to the drop in FPS.. but most MMOs are never fully optimized at launch. They basically need to have all the players in there to truly stress the game and see what needs to be done. And unfortunately, with the small couple hours betas they've been doing.. they simply can't test that. They are going to have to open the flood gates and let more ppl in for a longer period of time to test this before launch.

Dark Souls had amazing animations for example.

Like when you stood on a pile of rubble, your feet and legs and standing posture accommodated for the varied terrain. Like one foot would bend to be angled to be flat, and my knee would prop up for balance. On top of that it wasn't 15 preset standing poses, you could dynamically and slowly walk over the whole pile and it would follow. Weapons would glance off of walls with a reflex and a satisfying ting and recoil. Larger weapons would have to build some amount of momentum before they swung, and they would thud into the ground with some weight/ recoil. Rolling animations changed based on your carrying weight. Like if you had a lot of gear on you, you would do a flop to the ground and struggle to stand back up as you saw your character fighting for balance. Your shields would blow back with a varied amount of feedback based off of % of health lost in attack and % blocked.

This is an MMO however, so please don't try and add this level of detail. I don't mind bad animations when I know that they aren't good because they are improving overall game performance. If I could have this game have Morrowind graphics/ animations, but run smooth as silk, I would throw out all the high end settings out the window.

Gamplay > Graphics