First of all, I`d really like to try this game pretty bad.

But, the sound and animations are driving me nuts. I mean, it`s bad, really bad. It`s like they never took the basic walk cycle class at school.. Did they make it like this on purpose, or is that the best they could do?  Couldnt afford to get decent animators and sound technicians? No offence. Someone please enlighten me, cause i really dont get it. Low poly isn`t a problem, that i can understand, but there is no excuse for the animations.

And don`t come with that gameplay>all stuff, then we`d all be playing a game of stickmen or something..

My guess is that they did that on purpose, i mean, no animator would make such an animation (walk cycle ecpessially) unless they were told to do so specifically. Or maybe people just got a funny walk in this universe, like john cleese in that monty python skit.
 

This was not ment as a hate post at all, but i work with 3d and animation, and would like to see a discussion about this.

Have fun ingame, for those who actually get in there :)
 

---

Originally posted by Shon8k
Couldnt afford to get decent animators and sound technicians?

---

I think it looks pretty obvious that this is the problem.

---

Originally posted by Shon8k
And don`t come with that gameplay>all stuff, then we`d all be playing a game of stickmen or something..

---

Pacman and Tetris, best gameplay ever.

well the good thing about animation/sound is they are easier to change than other game mechanics. AoC run animation even went through some changes during beta because of the outcry.

They should hire at least one good sound tech to redo all game sounds and add ambient sounds eventually...but redo current ones first, at least the most common sounds that annoy people non stop hehe.

Then they should hire a team of few animators to redo all the common animations...like running.

Surely they can afford that much after the launch sales.

Well the good news is that is theoretically possible.   Hopefully now that AV is getting an influx of capital from game purchases and sunbscriptions (albiet slowly at this point) they can finish the game!

 have to say I find the sounds/animation pretty damn awful. While graphics do not = great game they are an essential tool in the ' suspension of disbelief ' . 

I'm currently playing Galaxy Online, among other things, so not really a graphics whore, but DF's look silly at times. The jumping sound FX struck me as home made, tasos bouncing up and down grunting into a microphone.

LOTRO has crap anims, VG has crap anims and it spoils these games for me. WoW has GREAT anims by comparison. I would like to think they will work on them, but I just know they wont as they will have much higher priorities.

One thing to note is that typically in sandbox MMOs the developers don't have to spend time creating new quests, dungeons, and pve content like in WoW for example. Instead they can put effort into upgrading the graphics engine, sound, animation, adding new tools(cities, new ships, weapons) so that players can create their own content/their own thing to do. Look at Eve Online - most of the expansions have been graphic/game mechanic upgrades.

---

Originally posted by nikoliath
The jumping sound FX struck me as home made, tasos bouncing up and down grunting into a microphone.

---

---

Originally posted by nikoliath

WoW has GREAT anims by comparison.

---

Yeah... I remember the first thing that impressed me when playing WoW was (then) the beautifully smooth animations.

sounds can be a mix bag, you dont want the to be low quality  but at the same time you dont want to overdo them.

Sometimes its good that your char just has a swing sound when they swing their wep and the occasional grunt but at the same time the grunt sound is not repeated like mad.

A game that overuses its sounds is LOTRO. due to it i just cannot get into it, was it nessesary for my char to moan and grunt every time he swings n gets hit.  My wife thought i was watching porn when i played a female char. the moaning and grunting is to damn overused. then on top of that every special attack has to have some sort of loud sound.

The most annoying sound i heard from DFO come from the guard towers.

they will eventually fix them with patches, you can wait, or play until then.