Alternate Animations...Underwhelming

Blazing Bolt, correct? This one is just BAAAD! I see no reason why it couldn't charge like the others. Amusingly, though, Blazing Bolt is probably the only one which actually needed a one-hand animation, being that it's naturally two-handed. All the other went from one-handed to... One-handed...

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.

So is the problem that they recycled old animations for different powers at all, or that they didn't do it enough? And you do realise that they'd have to remake animations anyway when porting between powers, to adjust for casting times?

LOL It took me a while to catch this joke, but it is true! The new sonic resonance animations are subtle, but different since the sonic waves come out of the hands, and maybe someone will like it over the original (sonic waves originating from the head). Personally, I didn't really care for it.

Let's not forget Vegeta.

Man, I just resub'd after a long hiatus, and the fact that BAB isn't around anymore really makes me sad.

Wait a minute. I'm confused--how do new animations get added to the mix get called 'limiting'? You added that just because it was 'new' it wasn't preferable to the other animations we already have. Why? Is it because they made the 'mistake' of porting the animations across as many powersets as normal, so they seem blase? Is it because you personally don't like the particular style of the animations?

I'm not trying to attack you in any way, I simply would like to hear exactly why more options=limiting. For instance, for my characters I love the new animations. The hand animations make a lot more sense for a lot of my characters, since I admittedly mostly do magic, with other origins thrown in for flavor. In addition to the majority being magic, a lot of my heroes are 'everyday heroes', and it makes a lot more sense for them to be simple and straightforward in their animations--none of that funny business with eye mojo and over-the-top gestures. While I appreciate that people will want grander gestures as well, I believe this is a good starting place for those of us who aren't usually into the showmanship of the newer sets (dual blades, dual pistols, to some extent kinetic melee).

And while in a perfect world we all would have gotten something we liked, I do remember many a quote from BABs and other animators basically saying "It's a lot harder then it looks" (paraphrased). It may SEEM like copy/pasta'ing to us, but as another poster mentioned, they have to balance and reskin and recolor and find the bugs that will pop up goodness knows where and so on and so forth. I understand you want big shinies, but I will propose that this is a good start.

I was just looking at the new Blazing Bolt and I think it looks pretty sad, frankly. Way back in beta I saw a Fire Blaster use Blazing Bolt and based on the extreme coolness of that one power alone I made my own Fire Blaster. The "oomph" of the animation and the deep, resonant sound it makes, all lend it an air of the character digging deep and really unleashing hellfire on someone. It's the nuclear option of the fire set. By contrast the new animation is a wet firecracker.

A lot of Blaster animations are still bugged, too, which is a shame.

I believe the key word you're overlooking there is "possible." I agree with Sam, namely that porting animations from one power to the rest of the powerset and porting over extant animations from other powersets would vastly increase the potential combinations. I don't know if that would be less work, but I suspect it would be, and it would've been an efficient use of development time.

As an example, some people might want to have *all* of their Fire Blaster or Ice Blaster attacks to come from their character's mouth. I can't imagine it would be all that difficult to simply add the "Fire Breath" animation to every single fire and ice attack. It certainly seems simpler than creating a single new alternate animation for each attack. Similarly, I can imagine Radiation Defenders and Mind Defenders/Blasters would like all or many of their attacks to emanate from their characters eyes. Again, seems like less work to just have that animation available across the board. The animation already exists, so all you have to do is add it to the other power and adjust the timing.

Personally, I'd love to have the Gunslinger, Mastermind and Lady Grey dual pistol animations available for my Dual Pistols character. the flashy animations are fun, but I'd also like to have a more subdued powerset for a more "serious" character. I can't see how that would be more work than creating entirely new animations for each power, especially seeing as how some of the "new" animations really are just ports of existing ones.

JUST new animations added to the pool is what's limiting. There are a total of something like five or six new animations, to be spread over something like 30 or 40 powers. It's limiting, because the result is a lot less interesting than what it could have been, and a lot less expansive, to boot.

Just as a random instance: Why don't any nukes have new animations? Oh, but what could those be? Why not a Nova Ground Punch? Why not an Inferno Fire Sword Circle?

Just as another random instance: Why doesn't Power Blast have a new animation? Why doesn't Power Push? Why doesn't Explosive Blast? Maybe none of the new animations fit, maybe it was to avoid being too repetitive, but still, why not reuse some OLD animations? Hell, the Teleport animation with an emanation point at the chest would have been perfectly acceptable.

Yes, some of those would have to be tweaked, slowed down, sped up and on and on and on. Yes, I know. So do it. Delay them another Issue if you must, but do it. Don't advertise changes to every Blast set only to release a half-finished product that's just going to make people go "meh."

I'm not saying new animations is more limiting than no new animations. I'm saying JUST new animations is more limiting than new animations AND old animations. They didn't need to exclude old animations from the rotation. And, on the other hand, the new animations didn't need to be almost exactly the same as the old one. Trust me, I won't pause the game, put a compass on my elbow and decree that this animation has five degrees more forearm deflection than this one which otherwise looks exactly the same. We don't need twelve eye blast animations. One will do, because there are other entire THEMES that could use work.

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.

Speaking of which, I feel Psi Blast was a huge missed opportunity. I'd have LOVED to see animations for that powerset that just had your character do NOTHING but glow at the head. You know what I mean, right? You stand in place, focus your mind and people around you drop dead. No need for arm flailing or pointing or yelling. You kill people WITH YOUR MIND. I can't imagine that would take more development time than the absurd new animation that most of Psi Blast got. HOLY HELL is that one bad!

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.

Does it? Because it seems to me that if they'd focused on JUST opening up old animations for additional powers instead of dicking around with making exact copies of them and only adding those would have, in fact, taken less time and less work.

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.

The sensible thing to do in that situation is to not have them go live with this issue.

This is one QoL improvement that deserves some quality time dedicated to it.

It should not have been some homework for the animation folks to play around with. It should have been given some decent time and effort.

Take a look at the alternate animations for MA and SS. You may not like every one, but each one was unique. They made sense with the theme of the set. And I loved the fact that knockout blow got an option that looked totally different and still remained interesting and fun.

These were just bad efforts all around. And extremely limited. Ice Blast got the crappy end of the stick with a double hand toss for EVERYTHING.

In addition to that. I'd have liked some new effects to go with the animations as well. Like not having every lightning bolt be a straight line. Why can't we have an arcing effect at least?

So many things that could have been done but instead they did a rush job. And for what? Issue 19 has plenty of stuff in it that's great on its own. This could have waited another issue or two and been done properly.

While I'm not thrilled with the latest batch of alternate animations (Ice getting the same animation for four abilities is indefensible), a few of them are quite solid. The less breakdancing and absurd posturing my character does, the better.

Someone in Beta threads (hell, maybe it was you Sam) suggested that Mind Control's Levitate get a new animation: A slight upturn of the head.

The thought gave me goosebumps. Personally, I love the one-handed Psionic Dart animation and wish it was applied to more powers, such as Mind Probe, Telekinetic Thrust, and Subdue.

I'm going to log in my Mind Blaster right now to look. I think you're on to something with the character exhibiting no overt histrionics, just standing there (I imagine with a smirk) laying everyone low.

Edit: The new Psi animation is Power Push, looks like. There are a couple that I like, such as Psychic Scream. It's recycled, but the addition of floor-level effects gives it a bit of a twist. Psionic Lance I don't get at all, unless it's bugged. Looks like the power goes backward and to the left for some reason. The pose is really silly.

I expected the new animations to be of the MA and SS quality, especially since they were given their own call-out in the press release. Unfortunately, I get the sense that the Party Pack and the new animations were done by the second string, since there's almost no verve to them and precious little (if any) originality. (I mean, really, Michael Jackson dance moves? Is the new animation team from WoW or something? Why duplicate something from that game instead of striking out in a new direction? Especially considering WoW has had the MJ dance emote for over 5 years now. If you're going to raid '80s dance moves, go for MC Hammer or Breakfast Club or *something* other MMOs don't do.)

I'd crap my pants if the psionic sets were given animations inspired by Akira.

I am honestly confused as to what this is implying.

1. Energy Transfer received an absolutely terrible animation when it was rebalanced several issues back.
2. Terrible animations were being implemented when Back Alley Brawler was around, so blaming the underwhelming animations from latest offering on his departure is silly.