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In every ESO video that has been released, we have yet to see motion capture incorporated into any of the animations. How can this be? Skyrim had such beautiful animation with mo-cap. The animation in ESO is an embarrassment in comparison.
There have been plenty of negative prophecies made by plenty of people about plenty of upcoming MMOs, but ESO looks like it may be setting the hugest scale of disappointment yet. I get the feeling that with a release date now set for April 4th 2014, this game has completely given up on being a success and is just cutting losses.
My sympathies go out to everyone who expected something from this game. With luck, the game will be so bad that it becomes a comical cultural reference. And then the Elder Scrolls franchise can continue its tradition of bringing humor to the internet.
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Making ESO 'on the cheap' ? Ugg,.
Someone else mentioned this but I agree,.it's feeling like SWTOR all over again.
well just think with the PC and mac versions being released in April and the PS4 and XBone being released in June. The console players will be happy to know that PC/Mac will be the testers.
So I'll wait until the console release to get the PC version.
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Just waiting for the "What, no Dolores House of Pain mod in ESO?" Fail!
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Did you ever consider that nobody has anything nice to say about the game because… well, there's nothing nice to say? if you think this site is filled with criticism you should have seen the beta forums during the last event.
Im sure this falls under the NDA =-P
I don't know, I'm still optimistic this game will be better than gw2 which people on this sight lavished untold amounts of praise on before it was released.
All of the animations in EQ2 were mocap'd. Incidentally, the animations in the game are largely disliked by people.
The thing about mocap is that it works well for cutscenes or other animations where the player isn't in control (Dragon kills in Skyrim), because the whole animation can play out as intended. Most animations, however, need to be able to work well with other animations and bits of scenery, something which mocap can't handle.
For example, a lot of older games have an issue when your character is standing or walking up a hill, and their toes are inside the ground and their heels are sort of floating, because they are using the same walking animation for all variations of steepness. Newer games can use tech which dynamically positions the skeleton to allow the feet and legs to actually be where they should be. Guild Wars 2 is a great example of this, where the legs and feet will bend to properly rest on the terrain.
There are other things as well, like being able to have different animations play on different parts of the body at the same time, such as running and casting a spell. With mocap, you'd basically need to record someone doing every possible combination of actions.
When does mocap makes sense (aside from cutscenes)? First person shooters can make great use of them, because you no longer have to worry about the actual player character animations. You can just mocap general actions like taking cover next to a door, crouching, aiming, and whatever else you need. Since damage is done at range, very little realism is lost when they jerk back after being hit. Of course, FPS games can't use those animations during multiplayer (other than stuff like knife kills) because actual players are in control of what you are seeing, and mocap doesn't handle that well.
Many games do have really poor animations, but that's just because they didn't invest in them. I guess it's easy to get some that are "good enough" for development, and just keep them for release because of time or budget reasons.
You make me like charity
its not going to work in a mmo you are moving the whole time, no time for motion capture.
is there motion capture in real life?
I'm going to make yet another player-driven prophecy.
Rubbing my hands over my crystal ball I see: Skyrim being a game with more content and "size" than ESO will ever have.
Also, to my memory, Star Wars Galaxies is the first game to have incorporated motion capture in an MMO, and that game was from 2003.
Ten years later, many other MMOs have done it. There is no reason why ESO should not, other than budget limitations or engine limitations.
I've been on this site for a long time, and got to see WoW basically get bashed on for all kinds of reasons over the years. It was so bad that simply mentioning in a post that you played it was enough to invalidate whatever argument you were making. Obviously WoW was not a bad game, but you couldn't have known based on these forums.
As for why nobody says anything nice about the game... remember there is an NDA in effect. Only so much can be said. Even still, I see plenty of people saying nice things about it, or trying to dispel misinformation, but they do tend to get drowned out by the people who aren't happy that it's not Modded Skyrim Online.
You make me like charity
Um... SWTOR wasn't made on the cheap, that game was made on the extremely expensive side. It completely missed what made a good MMO and couldn't live up to the hype at all, but it wasn't made on the cheap remotely at all.
What's really ironic is that one of the few good things about SWTOR are it's animations, lol. Most of which, by the way, used mocap.
You make me like charity
Did you ever considered that MMOs based on well-known pre-existing IPs always bring out the self-declared #1 (insert IP here) fan... typically with weird and wacky ideas about how the game should have been done if only the developers were even half as intelligent as he, the deluded amateur fan?
OTOH, make an original IP, clone the shit out of WOW = praise. (Wildstar anyone?)
But I digress... the OP here is not saying he's the #1 fan... just a connosieur of the finer technical aspects of MMO development... if only he had been part of the team. Someday, we'll have an MMO totally designed by public opinion polling of amateurs... and we'll get cars and houses designed the same way... because, as everyone on the internet knows, people who do this shit for a living know nothing and we know it all
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Then maybe the Devs making these games should quit using Betas as mini "free trials" and start letting actual Testers into their games.
You cant get squat tested in a 3 Day Beta Weekend. Thats not a Beta Test, its a Pre-Release Preview for Marketing purposes.
Instead they get Players because their Beta Applications have questions like "How many games have you played?", "Do you operate a Gaming Fan Site?", "Do you prefer PvP, PvE, Crafting, Other?"
They arent looking for experienced Game Testers anymore. They want FANS.
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well, if you consider the current trend of games being forced to go F2P due to lack of player interest then yes i wouldn't feel bad about agreeing with that statement.
also, criticism is what they should be listening and responding to. if they just plug their ears and hum they will be in for a nasty surprise come april 4th. i couldn't imagine ignoring people's criticism of my work, i would never get paid.
Well sounds like you and I do different types of work. The people who criticize my work and actually know wtf they're talking about are few and far between... they're treasured reources. People in this forum? Not so much.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The OP here is saying that there is no motion capture in ESO and that it's an enormous step backwards from Skyrim.
I guess what you're trying to say is that anyone who is horrified by an MMO design choice is a self-proclaimed connoiseur of the finer techincal aspects of MMO development. If that's true, then we're either all connoiseurs, or.. you know, we're just gamers that have an opinion (and who ultimately influence sales).
Mocap is just one way to do it that makes a lot of sense in some types of games (sports sims) and is just one of many ways to do it in others. How they do their animations is irelevant as long as they're well done... I'm not seeing anything objectionable about ESO's... so yeah, it sounds like useless technical nit-picking to me.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED