Animations

[FrenziedOctopus]

I'm going to be frank, the animations are terrible. The overhand swing with a 2 hander looks really awful and unnatural. Overhand spear with a shield looks pretty bad as well. Also, I'm not sure if it's the lag or not but there is a very noticeable pause for me when you prepare your swing. There is also an animation bug where when you change from ranged mode to melee mode the weapon shows the melee animation but is actually still in ranged mode.

I think that a lot of new people are put off by the strange animation set. All things considered, the different animation helps no one and is very unpolished. The Native animations are just better and more natural. I would like to see the current animations changed to that.

[Winter]

If we are reaaaally talking realism and how natural swings are

I agree, fendentes are not supposed to be thrown from above your head. These side swings are ridiculous, too! A swing like that is horrible - the quillions can no longer protect you when you are swinging horizontally. Tandos should only be done with a caged weapon like a side sword or schiavona. Sottanos are nonexistant for some reason and our thrusts are limited to a right handed aggressive window guard instead of allowing a thrust from boar's tooth, long guard, or even guard of the two horns. There is no way to perform any sort of pommel bind, disarm, or ligadura. German styles based out of window guard (or snake/ox guard, depending on school) are not available. Our parries are limited to poorly performed basic parries that completely skip over any sort of pivot and circle steps are nigh impossible with the current "footwork" commands. Many guards aren't even possible, like woman's guard, crown guard, guard of the two horns, or any of the low guards. This is just the 2h swords. The 1h swords are horrible and are based completely off of arming sword combat, and even then done poorly with no low guards or strikes whatsoever. There is no room for any smallsword play, buckler work, or rondels. Perhaps most inexcusable of all is disallowing left handed grips. I feel completely discriminated against! I rate 2/10.

I could go on about all of the problems with the animation sets of both NI and Native, but I think I've already made the point. This is a game incorporating a complex fighting system into up, left, right, down mechanics. Making things look completely natural when they were never meant to be done that way is not always possible.

The animation for 2h overhand swings was changed sometime around late 2012 or early 2013 because people's weapons were hitting people behind them, especially with the longer polearms. This presents a huge problem with attacking in formation, especially in enclosed spaces that are unavoidable with the current shield wall style. The overhand spear with a shield was part of an animation pack that was implemented to add some variety to attacks. This animation does have plans to be changed. The error with switching from ranged to melee is based on a timer that was implemented to keep players from throwing and quickly switching to melee to make kiting more difficult. Again, this is unpolished, but most people do not often switch to melee mode right after throwing outside of kiting.

We currently have someone working on animations, but he has only just recently started and animations are difficult to do, otherwise there would be more of them available in OSPs.

I have doubts that these animation changes really put off many people. The poll seems to support these doubts.

[FrenziedOctopus]

I wasn't really talking about realism because I know there are not only four directions in real fighting but as long as someone is working on it then I'm fine. I didn't know there was a reason for the overhand swing.