There is no bug here.

What it is is a disconnect between what players consider as "walk," "jog," and "run" animations versus what the game considers as "walk," "jog," and "run" animations. Mainly that "sprint" is a separate fourth animation speed, and that players who use mouse and keyboard don't normally see the "jog" animation speed since you can't easily modulate the character speed as you can with a joystick.

The reason that Jester/Drunk/Beast don't seem to 'bug out' like this is because they do have an animation for the fourth "sprint" speed. Thief does not have a custom "sprint," so it will revert to default. But all of them are working the same way, and this is all intended. What you really want is for them to go in and add another animation, because there is no bug.

Please see the discussion from the last time someone posted about this exact same issue.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

They work exactly as intended. The problem is the difference between what the game considers 'jog' and 'run' versus what players tend to consider as such. Since many players don't normally see the 'jog' animation, they assume that 'jog' is 'run without sprinting' and run is 'sprint,' which is false.

There are actually four animations players can use: walk, jog, run, and sprint. The one that's used is based on the speed of the character at the time. Since speed cannot easily be modulated on keyboard (gamepad players can modulate speed by pushing the joystick only part of the way), most keyboard players don't ever get to see characters move at the 'jog' speed. Pressing [W] will tend to move a character at the 'walk' speed (if they have set up the walk/run toggle, which is not default) or at the 'run' speed. Pressing [Shift] puts the character into the 'sprint' animation.

The way that M&K players can see the 'jog' animation is to have speed boosts while having the walk/run toggle set. That means RP walking with Wild Hunt, or RP walking with several of the CP speed passives.

The Thief personality does include animations for 'walk,' 'jog,' and 'run,' but not a 'sprint.' That means that if your character is moving at a sprint speed, it will use the default sprint animation. To be able to see the proper run, you need to be running without sprinting.

If you want to use a Personality that has no unique "sprint" animation, you will then need to make sure you're not going above the speed cap, which will mean that you should avoid speed boosts. If you want your speed boosts, you'll need to choose a Personality that has an appropriate "sprint" animation or settle for the default.

And just to set your mind at ease: the first patch of the PTS this cycle did actually try to do exactly what you say - lock the animation used to whether or not the sprint button was being held. It was reverted the second week because of how absolutely ridiculous it looked. Because the animation speed is expecting a certain movement speed, but you were moving faster than that, it really just ended up making it look like someone coated Tamriel with a thick layer of ice and everyone just slipped around everywhere. It also had the effect of breaking the workaround for players using mouse and keyboard to actually see the jog animation.

Please don't assume I'm an idiot. I have tested this extensively. I can even say that I thought Thief was bugged back when I bough it (and posted about the same problem in June 2020!), and then in that same thread I learned how the animations worked since I was playing with it for a while. Since then, I've been trying to explain that to anyone who has similar problems because it was me not understanding how it worked before. This is how the game works.

Players will use animations based on how fast the character is moving, going from 'walk' -> 'jog' -> 'run' -> 'sprint'. At the default speed, you walk when you move with the walk/run toggle on, you jog if you're moving slightly faster than that, you run when you move with the walk/run toggle off, and you sprint when you push the button.

However, since the movement animation is based on the movement speed rather than the actual button you push, using a speed boost may change the animation you'd expect. This is to prevent players from using an animation that's designed to move at a certain speed while the character is moving much faster and ends up with them skating along the ground, again, as shown on PTS. And again, this is the only way for a mouse/keyboard player to see the 'jog' animation since it is not possible to modulate speed. The only way to see it is to use a speed boost (like the Ring of the Wild Hunt) while RP walking.

You can test this yourself by looking at a Personality that has a distinct 'jog' style like Jester. Take a character with that personality and walk, then put on a speed boost like Wild Hunt and walk again. You'll see they are completely different, and that the 'jog' animation they use in the latter case is now something commonly seen without a controller.

The issue on PTS in the other linked thread was highlighted since werewolf looked so bad, but it did show with every other personality, as detailed in some of the later posts there (including things like Jester). Werewolf has a passive that gives them a 30% speed boost, so locking them into the 'run' animation when they were clearly moving above the normal 'sprint' speed looked patently ridiculous. But all personalities had that problem, just not to that great an extent since the werewolf 30% speed boost is quite a lot. The other personalities did not look fine, as aggreed on by many of the other posters in that thread. That change also made PC players permanently unable to see the 'jog' animation since players were locked into the walk animation despite moving at jog or even run speeds.

So no, the animation does not depend on the button you press. It depends on how fast you're moving, and that's how it works in this, and pretty well every, game. That's why players with controllers will see a smooth transition of movement animations depending on how far they push the joystick instead of some intermediate setting causing the character to skate because they haven't toggled sprinting.

Yes, a lot of this issue comes from the fact that ZOS has been handing out speed boosts like candy lately and ignoring the fact that these older personalities don't have a custom sprint animation. But there are workarounds. Another thread gives this as a suggestion:

jssriot wrote: »

Yeah, it's like with the Steed mundus stone--instead of the jog, it's a slowed-down sprint animation and it's so visually annoying. I get around this by investing points into Hasty in the Fitness tree instead, which only requires 8 CP per level, which I think is a bargain. I don't need to jog faster but sprinting faster I find useful, and since it doesn't effect your base movement speed, only your sprint speed, it doesn't change the jog animation. Also, it frees up CP in the Crafting tree for other things.

So if you modulate sprint speed only instead of overall speed, you won't be hitting the transition speed there. But yes, if you're playing a character with speed boosts, it'll put you into the next animation tier.