if they announced a release date there is nothing we can say to change anything at this point. they have it all planned out by now. any changes will be made post launch

according to a lot of people in this thread "they still have 5 months to fix em, no big deal." im not a computer guy so I have no idea how long something like that takes.

I'm seeing stuff like this in this thread and the other thread, and it's really starting to bother me.

THIS IS NOT THE RELEASE TRAILER!

This is simply a trailer showing some PvP stuff along with the release date announcement. Tell me where you see them say that this is the release trailer.

YES! YES! We have a winner!

That is great. They should hear they need to do more work. Of course, they know it. They admit it.

Game development is coming along very well. We completed major systems development, and are focusing on making this the Elder Scrolls game you expect: polishing the hundreds and hundreds of hours of content, making combat even more fun and responsive, fixing quest issues, and much, much more. In fact, we plan on spending the next few months before launch reacting to the latest feedback from internal and external testers and gameplay data we have collected.

As some of you know, we’ve been in beta testing for about a year now, leading up to our most recent test in late November where we had over 300,000 people in the game over a 48 hour period.

But this is the beta, and if they had polished the heck out of this, just so it would be perfect for the trailer, and the game itself wasn't super uber microscopically polished, people would rage and rant about OMG THE DEVS LIED.

improve and change are two different things here. they will polish the game still, they will not change anything at this point. once the release date is set they are in the polish stage of a game. major changes would cause the date to be pushed and since they announced a specific date i am positive they wont push it back

I don't think the problems with animation are about polish only.

You are right though - not much will change.

They look good enough for me, plus a trailer does not make the game, and by the time the game goes live I am sure some of those animations will have been tweaked.. if not no biggie to me... I am glad I never got into picking games apart down to the sub-atomic level, if I did I most likley would not be playing anything.. but that is my opinion for me..

All past ES games have had bad animations, does this make it ok ? No not in the least.

But as a old gamer who remembers the old 2D 8 bit graphics, I usually go with "is the game fun to play?" If it is I can over look the graphics and animations. If the story and game play is good what is there to worry about ?

The last patch Skyrim go broke all facial animations on the player character and its still not been fixed. They don't even blink anymore, but the game is fun still.

I guess really I'm not even saying that. In my ignorance, I literally don't see what the critics mean...

So I guess they're "fine" for me?

With so many people criticizing them, I feel like I must be wrong. But I don't understand why/how.

Yeah same here. I've watched the video several times now and just don't see whats wrong. Been playing these MMO's since EQ and yeah the animations look fine. No idea what the haters were expecting, I mean there's only so many ways to have a sword swing or bow shoot or fireball cast. Doesn't help none of the critics are specific at all, just "omg it all svcks lolzderp".

Ya exactly.

I've asked for clarification both here and on YouTube and people just say "what are you dumb, have you seen the video!?!?" (the dumb stuff is just on YouTube, but people here are equally non-specific.)

Morrowind had choppy/bad animations. People moved very mechanically.

I think everything looks quite smooth and human in ESO. Like I said, I think people move more naturally than in Dark Souls which I always felt was clunky.

First off not hating to hate.

I laid out my constructive criticism here: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1480604-is-it-me-or-animations-are-terrible/?p=23183787 so there are your specifics.

My guess is that like others - saying the animations look fine for an MMO is not good enough because they want TES solo game quality animations not MMO quality animations.

That released pvp video though - how can people say that has not been doctored. It has been extensively doctored and tailored. It is not actual game play - what group of MMO gamers are going to be that orchestrated by marching in a line? Where is the 'beloved' MMO maneuvering of jumping all the time? What characters only walk like that? Where is the User Interface? No they are showing the best of what they got now and the longer those scenes would have last the more glaring the robotic and diconnected animations would have been.

I'll conceded that for an MMO - not bad, but this isn't TES solo game status at all. Worse than Oblivion from what I've seen. If they can polish that will be good, but I don' think they can really alter what makes it look so jilted which is the disconnect from player skill and the lack of collision in combat. AoE is what the game plays like even when in 1:1 martial combat.

eh, still not really seeing it. You can clearly see that there is contact and reactions to hits. Is it spot on 100%? of course not, its not going to be, never is, you have to account for lag and such and theres always ranges on ability's even in melee. It certainly doesn't look robotic or disconnected though.

Yes it is damned if you do and damned if you don't. It is now which of the damns hurt you less.

They are far from terrible. They are also far from excellent. They are middling. Which means they should be improved upon but they are not critical. I mean I am playing friggin Morrowind right now, albeit modded, but even that doesn't help the animations much. I guess if I can enjoy that, I can deal with ESO's animations. Some of them are pretty good and some need a lot of work. Would be nice if they at least managed a middling-good quality for their animations across the board.

Given how common this complaint is? I guarantee they are working on improving it.

I don't think they need improvement, I think they need a change in style. I don't know how people can find the animations terrible because I think they look pretty good from a technical point of view. The problem is that they move like cartoon character (mostly, not all the time) and not like you would normally, and it throws me off a lot. If the game had a cartoony style, then I'd be ok with it but this game is going for a realistic art style but the animations are cartoonish, it doesn't connect well at all. It's cringeworthy because it looks wrong, not because it looks bad.

The only time i think the animations look weird are for 1st person bow and the dual wielding poke attack thing looks reallllllyyyy dumb, and for 3rd person just fix the running animation so that the arms arent pumping back so crazy far. sure they could do more creative or better looking animations but thats the only problem i have with what they are using now

This. The few specific complaints I've read basically boil down to - it doesn't do something that only off-line, single player or small map lobby-based multiplayer games can reasonably do.

Actually, I did read one criticism that the combat stance was a bit low. That was a specific and (in my opinion) legitimate critique that the developers might actually find useful. The rest is noise.

People need to relax a little. They aren't horrible but they aren't the best either.

The animations will likely improve with polish phase. At least this is not a major game mechanic that's not fixable with tweaks and refinements.

Did everyone see at around 1:10 of the promotional video, when there is supposed to be this epic battle with the guy who sprouts wings and attacks the Argonian? I looks like something that a kid made with a camera and G.I.Joe figurines. Like when the Argonian turns, it looks like someone is rotating a static stick figure lol. Even WoW that is nice years old has infinitely better turning animations (like the torso first turns and they you see the lower body turn with the feet moving).

Terrible, completely amateur, child-like quality and absolutely atrocious. I am super disappointed at the animations.

when there is 50-200 people on your screen, your crappy computer would not handle the load when all animations would be smooth as babys cheek.

sorry, but the average joes computers dictate a lot what we get, so svck it up.

Yeah. That is where the criticism comes in. What was acceptable in a decade-old game isn't acceptable in the here and now. Current standards and technology cover much smoother and more complete animations, and the fact that you, as someone who isn't a critic of it, can easily compare it to something that far behind the tech scale should be an immediate warning sign. While the novelty nostalgia of some retro-games has sold some indie titles lately, it simply isn't acceptable in a fully developed AAA title. That it clashes with the graphics, which are about where they should be (given some ease for the constraints of an MMO) is even more puzzling, and makes the animation look even worse.

Yes that and also adding too many computer calculations for the server to handle and transmit that data over the network. Also not everyone will have super stable super high speed internet.

Let us see your game trailer then? I would like to see your professional piece of art. Let me see your stick figures and crudely drawn swords