Attack Animations-DW and Sword and Shield-Why haven't these been changed?!

Zardayne · June 2017

In 3 years of playing ESO I haven't used DW a whole lot nor have I thought about using Sword and board because I generally don't tank. I remember using using these for very short stints when I first started and was leveling up just to get a feel for the skill lines and I thought the sword/dagger animations were ok. When I tried using a mace or an axe..OMG who the hell thought thrusting with one of these weapon types looked normal? Luckily, I don't play these styles so I moved on and never thought anything about it. Well yesterday I get this wild idea to try and create a tanker and I would use DW to help speed up the leveling process. After 3 years these animations have remained untouched for hammers and axes on both dw and SnB. Are you kidding me? In some areas of ESO they just drop the ball. One is, like this, some of the combat animations. Whomever was or still is in charge of these animations for these two skill lines needs to be moved back to the Minecraft team. Why haven't these been changed to look like normal animations with these weapon types? It's been over 3 years!! Please fix these..it bothered me so much I shelved my new tank and went back to my old characters. So disappointing..

The_Lex · June 2017

@Zardayne

I hear you and agree that the axe and mace animations for DW/S&B are unrealistic and dumb. That said, I can swallow those animations for the sake of other issues that require ZOS' attention, i.e., bug fixes, lag, infinite loading screens, Cyrodiil performance, etc. Many of these issues remain unresolved since pre-IC days.

Darkstorne · June 2017

All the animations are atrocious. I get most annoyed by 2H animations because of the massive delay at the end of a light attack swing. For the sake of long cooldowns between attacks the animation is forced to look incredibly awkward and unrealistic, with your character connecting with an enemy immediately after a left click (presumably for a sense of responsiveness) forcing all the cool down time into the back end of the swing. So while it looks like your character should be channeling that momentum into a follow up attack that you're furiously clicking for, they just act like they're out of breath and physically incapable of raising the weapon again.

All 2H animations also have the problem of being "flailing" attacks visually. No sense of mastery at all, just wildly swinging the weapon in a wide arc and hoping it connects. Even the ready stance shows no sense of skill. Compared to games like For Honor that place a huge emphasis on animation quality and making the characters look like masters of their craft when they execute attacks... ESO is incredibly painful to watch. Flail, out of breath, flail, out of breath, flail, out of breath. Gross.

Zardayne · June 2017

I can understand the need to fix all of those issues and of course those will be ongoing for the life of the game. If you have crappy animations that tends to scare off new players and I'm sure anger some of the older ones which isn't good for the game either. Just look at the MMO Secret World. Their animations were so bad and clunky, even though the game ran very well and had great quests, etc, the animations drove people away. In my opinion in today's gaming world, more and more players are more into heavy graphics and smooth combat. They're no longer fine with Everquest and UO simplified animations. They want that Dark Souls combat. Me, I just want it to look as realistic as possible. Thrusting with an axe and hammer..that's not doing it for me.