Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

croakie wrote: »

Other than Blazing Spear and Force Pulse is there a viable spammable for Templar with a double stave build?

Jabs? If you are suggesting that jabs isn't a viable spammable then you're missing out.

There is no more jabs. Might as well have deleted the skill when they changed the animation imo.

croakie wrote: »

Other than Blazing Spear and Force Pulse is there a viable spammable for Templar with a double stave build?

Idk. I just dropped my templar, which was my main since day 1 of the game's release, for my secondary, which is a warden. If U36 nerfs warden further, then I'll probably just drop this game until there's some decent changes.

kargen27 wrote: »

"There is no more jabs. Might as well have deleted the skill when they changed the animation imo."

Spend a couple of nights using jabs to kill world bosses and that will be enough so you hardly notice them. You get used to them. I actually prefer the new animation to the old now.

I'm a professional animator. There is nothing on god's green earth that would ever compel me to use the new Jabs. It's poorly animated, it reuses assets, and I've shown other animators in my workplace this new skill animation and they all agree; the new animation blows. It doesn't follow the principles of animation, which exist due to over 100 years of trial, error, and practice in the medium. They exist because without them, animation looks bad. The new jabs animation is just keyframes. There is nothing else that they did to make it; someone probably plopped this thing out in a half an hour and called it a finished new animation. I've gone into great detail since the U35 test server opened up as to why the new animation is poorly made. You can click my name and find it all in multiple threads, I'm not gonna flood you with several pages of text to try and show you why it's bad.

I wouldn't mind a visual upgrade on a skill. I'd also not mind a new jabs animation if it was made better than the old one. But fact of the matter here, the new animation is worse than the old animation. The old animation followed the principles of animation and looked fantastic for it. Unless they re-animate the skill, make a unique spear model for the animation, and make damn well sure the new animation is better than the original jabs animation, I will never touch this skill out of principle. I won't even play Templar again out of principle aside from doing daily crafting. I won't support this kind of change, and will be vocal about it until something is done about it.

nestyrian wrote: »

@merpins

I could not have said that any better. I am glad we have an actual animator here to give an expert perspective.

Thanks. Ironically, I think the new flurry animation is fine if a bit slow. It could use some slow in and slow out, but the timing of the animation if fine...

Too bad it's a reused animation from heavy attacking with dual wield, I believe. I'd like to see them make a new animation for this skill for that reason, since reusing animation like that isn't great either.

hrothbern wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

"There is no more jabs. Might as well have deleted the skill when they changed the animation imo."

Spend a couple of nights using jabs to kill world bosses and that will be enough so you hardly notice them. You get used to them. I actually prefer the new animation to the old now.

I'm a professional animator. There is nothing on god's green earth that would ever compel me to use the new Jabs. It's poorly animated, it reuses assets, and I've shown other animators in my workplace this new skill animation and they all agree; the new animation blows. It doesn't follow the principles of animation, which exist due to over 100 years of trial, error, and practice in the medium. They exist because without them, animation looks bad. The new jabs animation is just keyframes. There is nothing else that they did to make it; someone probably plopped this thing out in a half an hour and called it a finished new animation. I've gone into great detail since the U35 test server opened up as to why the new animation is poorly made. You can click my name and find it all in multiple threads, I'm not gonna flood you with several pages of text to try and show you why it's bad.

I wouldn't mind a visual upgrade on a skill. I'd also not mind a new jabs animation if it was made better than the old one. But fact of the matter here, the new animation is worse than the old animation. The old animation followed the principles of animation and looked fantastic for it. Unless they re-animate the skill, make a unique spear model for the animation, and make damn well sure the new animation is better than the original jabs animation, I will never touch this skill out of principle. I won't even play Templar again out of principle aside from doing daily crafting. I won't support this kind of change, and will be vocal about it until something is done about it.

Hi @merpins
You being an animator

My duo ESO buddy is very sensitive to strong light effects.
The new Puncturing Sweeps now very tiring to play.
Templar is her main character since early 2014.

Are there no standards to help designers to keep the level of excitation low enough ?
Are there no (external) specialists who can be hired by ZOS as consultant for an expert opinion ?

thanks

I mean, judging by the two animations they pumped out in U35, my guess would be no because they don't have the funding to hire a specialist. Or rather, pay an animator to do a decent animation. They made an animation that an intern could make with light guidance in under 2 hours (jabs), and reused the heavy attack animation for the the "new" flurry animation. It doesn't require a specialist to do decent animation, it only requires a good animator and a good team, and to do two skills, they could have just put one of their animators plus one of their modelers, and possibly a board artist if they have one for such short animations, to make proper animations for this. To make a new jabs animation properly, it would take a team of, at minimum, 2 people, but more like 3-5 people (animation director included) about 3 days to finish for each animation. The fact that they made animations of this quality; reusing assets including the entire animation for flurry, as well as the spear and particle effects for jabs... They probably had someone do it without much guidance from a director, without storyboards for reference, and without much more than someone saying "hey you have an hour, we need a new animation for Jabs. It needs to fit in .8 seconds of gameplay." And they asked the animator to do it by themselves, so of course they had to take shortcuts to get it done a la reusing something that looks like a spear, and only doing keyframes. That's the only reason I could think of as to why they did such a poor job at this. Either that or they no longer have animators on staff due to Covid, and they released these animations before bringing more animators on staff for the next major expansion, or they didn't want to allocate one of the animators that was working on the next expansion (assuming there will be new animation next expansion) to doing something like this for free (I mean the animation is free for players, not something we pay for) and so they had an animation intern do it instead.

TLDR: It's possible to make a good animation. The standards exist, and are clearly written, taught, and learned by animators and other professionals in the industry LONG before they would get a job somewhere working on a game like this. But good animation takes time to do, and spread between 2-5 people (modeler, animator, rendering artist or some equivalent for the games industry, director, board artist), it would take 2-3 work days to make a proper animation for jabs. 24 hours of work spread between 2-5 people is expensive, but it's what the players expect in terms of quality for a class animation, especially a main spammable like jabs.