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Animations are a deal breaker for me
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Animations are one of my main deal breakers in a MMO. Not to be confused with Graphics. But character animations, as i how they look moving, or how they look swinging a weapon or how they look casting a spell.
Imo Warhammer, another of MJ's game had very poor animations for movement as well as Melee an cast. Far worst than World of Warcraft. Total deal breaker to see the animations for the Chaos Chosen compared to the GW2 Norn.
But hard to back this game when they havnt shown much in the Animation area. I hope we see animations soon.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
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But cmon - it's a Kickstarter. People aren't seeming to understand this. Kickstarter is used, to...kick start a game. To make a game be mad.
It's just been perverted by alot of developers bringing 50% or even 80% finished games to KS and releasing them a few months later.
KS is meant to be used by games that have nothing but an idea and the ability to be made.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
The OP did not say they will be bad or good,he merely says it is a concern and sited why,there is nothing wrong with that.
Instead of flaming with TROLL or getting all defensive how about give reason there is no concern?
Kickstarter is not an excuse ever for anything.
Ethan C who is promoting Divergence also used a similar kick starter idea.Com,pare what he has to show for effort to what MJ is showing.You will easily see one person has put in a lot of effort while they other wants money for nothing.You can see who is serious and who just wants a money grab.
As to animations they are a big deal and to a good eye you can see effort from a poor effort.Free to play games are famous for bad animations,simple reason they are cutting cost everywhere.You make a model with lots of vertices,several moving parts,it gives the model a more life like animation.Then the textures do help to also give it a realistic look.Then you need to actually make enough frames or the animation happens too fast again typical of cheaper games.
It is a big point,actually all of game design is because if a developer is cutting corners,he is not putting in the effort to make a great game.I cringe when i hear other "excuses" like gameplay matters more.YEs it does but they BOTH matter,you are not exempt to second rate game design just because you think you are doing one aspect well.
I have one simple philosophy,if you can't do a game justice,don't bother trying to do it.it ends up as nothing more than a cash grab.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Animation is more important than graphics to me any day of the week. That being said realize this....there is no game yet. All you saw was a couple of concept design models and rough placeholder animation. They had zero to show when kickstarter started. To say what they have shown is a work in progress is an understatement. I mean the models were stiff with barely any rigging at all.
I do agree with the OP's assertion that the animation needs to be more fluid like wow or gw2 and a lot less like warhammer which was stiff.
I don't agree with you often but absolutely agree 100%. Combat and Character Animations are the #1 deal breaker for me. I would also add that Rift's animations were severely lacking as well which resulted in my discontinue of playing. WoW, GW2 (non Dual Wield) and now Neverwinter ought to be the standard for combat animations IMO.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
If you're going to base a game off of animations, that doesn't even have animations yet. Then I don't know what to say.....
What you have seen are tech demos and concepts. Not Internal Beta, not alpha, not beta, NOTHING. A PRE DESIGN CONCEPT DEMO. How can you condemn a game on a feature with ZERO, and I mean ZERO information on a particular design element?????????
Development hasn't even started yet, and you're whining about animations????? rofl.
They haven't released the other 9 races yet, there's no CONCEPT ART for them even. Animations soon? Really are you trolling? Who designs animations pre production? You need models to animate first. A game world. Wow, take a chill pill.
So can I just flame you for your elluding to MJ just making a money grab? Or do I need to give reasons why your defamatory comment is silly?
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. ~Declaration of Arbroath
Does the game need your backing from now until the far future when we can see the final animations they'll be using?
You make me like charity
also agree with OP. Poor animations and clunky character movement are a real turn off. While there is no reason to suspect poor design at this time, but this should be on MJ's white board of things to get right.
shame on people for jumping on the OP, he did not assume it was going to be bad depsite previous games, he was just telling us whats important to him.
and its important to me.
How can you whine about animations when they have said nothing about the source code?
Not just need the animations float like a river. We need to see the code behind them. Looks can fool. If they look good, but dont follow the laws of physics it is all for naught. Lets say you jump and Get hit in the air at a 43 degree angle, the animations must react to this in a natural way including reversing the jump as well as perfectly time the landing and fit it to the power of the hit from faceplant to landing on your feet.
without seeing this code, not just the animations, it probably will be very hard for me as well to back this game.
3/10 troll attempt
Fortunately, we no longer need you to back the game to make Camelot Unchained into a reality. I can understand that poor animations are a deal breaker for you and completely respect that, but to create a thread worded the way you did is a weak troll attempt.
As other posters mentioned, what you've seen is Kickstarter / very early animation and models; I'm sure some of the things we've seen thus far may not even look or appear in the finished product.
A game maker saying game play is important. Let the revolution begin!
just bugging ya
I agree good animations are very important. WAR's animations were somewhat hit and miss. The dwarfs had great animations. Very fluid and natural-looking. Far as I could tell it was a completely different animator doing those than the other races' animations. The Swordmaster's animations in particular I thought were terrible.
The orcs also looked amazing model-wise, but many of their animations simply sucked.
I really hope CU will be sporting fluid and natural-looking animations moving around the world. In combat there's room for exaggerated movements to give the player an extra feeling of "oomph!" when they strike an opponent and sees him stagger from the blow.
This. I feel that the OP has not done his homework/research of the game. Due to what MJ said and backers having the ability to discuss stuff like this and raise concerns we have with the developers directly, so I wouldn't worry too much.
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I actually agree with you there.
Though everything in game has a hardware cost associated with it.
A smoother animation here could mean a few less faces at character creation as an example.
Being this is going to be all about mass PvP I can imagine some bells and whistles will be sacrificed.
I agree that animation in a mmo are very important, take the pathetic animation that TESO has. As for you not backing the game lol, the game doesn't need your backing it's reach it's goal and others have backed it.
Typical from a person who never backed the game in the first place, sorry but you really have no voice in this MMO. The game is getting made and the backers will voice any concerns they have with MJ and co.
I can hear the non backer moaning when the game comes out because the backers have certain privileges that they don't lol.
I agree. Although WAR's animations were not as good as GW2 or WoWs, I think they were adequate, and the IP and the unique artistic style of the game was enough for me to deal with the animations. WAR, to date, is one of my favorite MMOs.
Mr. Jacobs has said that he wishes for CU animations to emulate those of GW2 or War, so they will at least be trying for very fluid animations.
One thing you can say about FFXIV/RR was/is the animation are some of the best you will see in any mmo to date.
Wanting to have great animations is not the same as having them. Still, the walking animation of the prototype viking model seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMDAZl5CXt4 looks pretty good.