Alternate Animations...Underwhelming

I know there's a bunch more stuff in this issue and I'm going to jump right on the Incarnate content with my 50 thugs/poison MM...but I just had to say it.

The new blaster alternate animations are just...boring.

And repetitive. I was expecting the sort of thing that they did for some of the melee sets. Where you actually had a different option for each power. But it seems like they made exactly 3 new animations. The single right hand extended, the double arm toss and the new Aim charge.

So far I've tried ice blast, lighting blast and fire blast. Am I wrong and are there more variety in the other sets? What the hell happened?

I was expecting at least SOME flashy new animations and at the very least some new power effects.

Now I'm not sad that I can lose the Zapp animation in the electric blast set. But I'm a bit sad that it shares the animation for lighting bolt.

I kept out of the I19 beta due to the fact that I was busy and also I was kind of caught up with X3:Terran Conflict. I figured I'd just be nicely surprised with some new flavor for my favorite blast sets...but these are downright boring. It's almost like a rush job and a letdown after Kinetic Melee and Dual Pistols.

Please tell me these are just the first set of new animations that are coming to blaster sets...

I agree, actually. I wanted the option to use animations that already existed for any blast, so that I could have all my powers come from the same hand/eyes/etc. A lot of the new animations are clunky and weird looking - and so far the only animation I like are replacements for animations I already liked.

here is the thing. i would have liked moe flashy stuff too, but go to the i19 overview, now read what it says for the alternate animations. they told us exactly what we were getting. those of use who expected multiple emination points because another game did them, or getting magic wands or guns, were entirely flying on our own. hopefully we will get more, lots more, i still need to be able to have projectiles fly from my mouth, preferably for ancilliaries, but that is probably quite far in the future. we were told what we would get, and we got it.

here is the quote, in fact "Now players can customize the animation for some characters' powers. Shoot a Psychic Blast or even launch a Fire Breath from your character's hands. Hurl an attack from one or both hands. Select the animations and customize how a character fires off its powers at any Tailor."

is that description inaccurate?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

The fact that you can choose one or two handed isn't a problem. It's that every single one looks the same. You can have one one-handed attack look different from another.

Just look at the new Dual Pistols powers and compare them to the mastermind versions. Worlds apart, and a totally different feel.

If this is what it means to lose BAB, then I think they need to chase after him right now...

I took a peek at the Mind Control alternate animations on my Dom... only two powers, Mesmerize and Terrify, have something different. Okay, yeah, the alternate sleep looks like (comes out the hands, instead of the lean-forward-head-bob), but what about the other powers? <_<;;

Here's hoping i20 is adding more animations, both more variety to what we have now, as well as adding animations to other powers.

Whether or not it was what was published in the previews of the issue is not the main issue.

I'm trying to imagine War Witch being satisfied with that coming out of the animation department(or anyone for that matter). Is this what they meant when they said they had the same level of commitment to the game, no matter who left?

Because apparently that statement exempted the animation department.

I'm hoping we'll see more animations as time goes on. I personally (for no particularly logical reason) am hoping and expecting i20 to be a big issue, so maybe we'll see more then. If anything, I'm hoping its like Power Proliferations - an ongoing project.

I'm dismayed by the incredible lack of pizazz and variation in these new animations.

I guess I am kinda alone in this, but I actually adore the new power animations. I like the uniformity, and I can mix and match what stays and what goes. No, it's not sunshine and rainbows coming out of your head, but it does add variation for those who are tired of the same animation after x number of years, and yet it adds uniformity to those who kept complaining that well this power comes from the eyes, this from the hand, this from who knows where...

Keeping everything balanced and stable is difficult, and making all these new colors and power animations work is difficult and given everything else they've been giving us lately I'm willing to cut them slack about not having ten new completely different animations for every power set. Patience, padawans. You'll get more, just they need to work on other things as well.

I no longer look like a cavewoman when I turn on Integration - I'm happy

I have to admit, I like the new animations too. They're mostly direct and to the point, which suits many of my characters. Not crazy about the snipe one, though. Charge with both hands, fire with one just looks strange to me.

The general response to the new animations in Beta was "Meh." And I was a large part of it. What animations they made aren't bad (bugged, maybe), and unlike what others are saying, I don't feel there are too few. The problems are entirely different.

The largest and most obvious problem is that they only added NEW animations as alternatives, vastly, vastly, VASTLY limiting the possible variety. There are so many old animations that could have been reused to give more variety to powers that otherwise didn't have it. For instance, the Power Push animation could have been so good in, say, Telekinetic Thrust. But it was never used, because it wasn't "new." Far as I'm concerned, we don't need NEW animations, we need "new to this power" animations, the more the better.

The second largest problem is this seems like this was just busywork for a new artist, because so many of the new animations are basically remakes of the old ones. The crossarm we got for everything in Ice Blast is the same crossarm that already existed for powers like that Radiation Blast cone, and the new power for X-Ray Beam is almost exactly like the old power for X-Ray beam. If you'll consume development time to make new animations, then frikkin' make NEW animations! Why waste your time, your money and our patience remaking old animations into even less appealing variants? Seriously, this is like what happened to hairstyles way back when.

Finally, a LOT of the animations are bugged, especially in the air. Famously, the alternative for Power Burst was and I believe still is bugged, where the effect originates at the chest or at the shoulder, instead of at the palm of the hand. Feels like I'm about to rocket-punch launch my entire arm at the shoulder. A lot of them don't "track" in the air. Some will rotate your character to face the enemy, but snap back to upright mid-way through the animation, and some won't track at all.

Really, this feels like it was done by a new guy in his lunch breaks whenever he had spare time. It feels rushed, unprofessional and UNFINISHED. And I don't mean "we'll do more another time." I mean "I ran out of time so I just uploaded whatever was at least presentable." It's such a HUGE missed opportunity, seriously.

Again, the animations aren't bad. It's just that they're so badly used it's not funny. Why give a one-hand blast a one-hand blast alternate animation? Why not give Power Blast an alternate animation? Why not use old animations? Why mismanage this so badly? I can't blame the animators on this one. They did their job. It's whoever managed what they work on that dropped the ball hard enough crack concrete.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.