Originally posted by ArChWind

Vindictus Online does it best IMO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnKJpXZxmyU&feature=g-vrec

I'd have to agree with this. Vindictus has great combat.

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Originally posted by grimgryphon

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Originally posted by ArChWind Vindictus Online does it best IMO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnKJpXZxmyU&feature=g-vrec

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I'd have to agree with this. Vindictus has great combat.

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I throw my vote to Vindictus as well - the physics are awesome, nothing comes close. And the animations (shield slamming enemies into the ground, picking up random junk and tossing it around, throwing enemies into each other) are jawdropping for me.

And I love the boob physics.

Originally posted by QSatu

GW2 and FF XIV.

GW2 for all those middle animations between different attacks etc. It really feels like my characters doesn't repeat the same movement time after time but behaves like a real person.

FF XIV for simple outstanding quality of those animations.

 

I concur with the above. However, I actually rank FFXIV as having the best overall.

Funny to see all the Wow responses.

Wow does not sync animations with powers. This is why the combat appears smooth. Many of the special attacks are nothing more than a flashy animation that has nothing to do with the character. It is layered over top of it. If one animation goes off it also cancels the auto-attack animation. This is why so many players of Wow have a hard time playing other games that try a realistic approach. When a toon actually does the animation for each power and action it does the animators have to put a hell of a lot more time and effort into the combat system. I have heard constant complaints by many that they can't stand waiting for an animation to finish ... even if it finishes within the global cooldown if any. It simply is a result of the Wow-factor when so much time is put into one game and any other system will feel alien for a long time until it is allowed to be gotten used to.

When I think of actual good animations I always look to see if the game actually animated the moves or simply cheated with an overlay. If the question was whether gameplay was smoothest then I might think differently but for best animations Wow isn't even in the running because for the most part they don't even have animations for what the character is actually doing.

Dragon's Lair.

What?! It's as much an MMO as some of the contemporary crap I've seen people ignoring each other in...

What I find interesting is how many are saying AoC , (which I'm not disagreeing with , I'd rank it in top 3 for sure) , and on the other end , if you asked the opposite , which modern mmorpg has the worst combat animations , you'd likely see TSW ranked as one of the worst (many , many reviewers and players noted this and even Funcom prelaunch said they knew they needed work).

So same company has one game with some of best regarded , and their next major game regarded as some of the worst.

This is a hard one for me as I make bvh format animations...I have to break it into categories to give my opinion really.

For realism and best syncronization:

- I goto give it up to War of the Roses.

It is only an MMO in the same sense that World of Tanks is. Butn I was impressed with anims in this game from it's first preview trailers. Not just on merit of how smooth they are, or true to human ability, but the fact that the contact for doing damage is heavily mesh based as apposed to zone based, so a well timed block can actually deflect a blow and the results are visually a blow being deflected, instead of a weapon or whole avatar ghosting through.

For Most Economical:

- Aika online gets my vote.

This games devs cut out anything not nescessary animation wise. A lot of it is recycled (such as run foward being the same as run backward, and turning being a partial play of the strafe anim). and all the animations have very short play times on infinate loops until they are cancled out by a new event. The devs did a good job of drawing attention away from things like this with particle effects. You really don't notice when your basically buffing up and calling down the woop ass that your charecter is just looping a single short anim through all of it. in addition to this a lot of the idles are syncronized. It is hard to minimilize anymore then this and still have it look visually pleasing over all.

For sheer volume and diversity:

- Runescape has it, imo.

The amount of idle anims is insane. As is the number of emotes (stand alone and item influenced). From obstacles and shortcuts, to the usage of individual weapons and weapon types, all the animations are unique and custom built for the action you are performing (or not performing in the case of idles). And if that wasn't enough players can get replacement animations.

An example here is in the alternate teleportation animations a player can aquire.:

 You can work off what ever default animations exist for  teleporting (which are many and varied depending on how you choose to teleport)...or a lighting bolt can travel through you crackeling the ground shortly before you leap into the sky with that same epicness that the flying superhero from the show hero's does. you can have gnome copter pick you up after you pack your luggage. a pegasus can come down and wisk you away, or you can ride on the back of a greater demon as he burrows you to your destination.

With runscape animations I get the feeling that their animators have never been told "no" on something. Or that the their department lead had a horrible accident that broke his arm in such away that he is stuck walking around giving an eternal thumbs up.

Originally posted by Jonoku

All I know is that I love the SWTOR combat animations and it's the best I have seen. I want to know about other MMOs that also have great animations.

What are your thoughts?

In my opinion the up and coming Wildstar looks to have that organic fluid animations we both desire.

Originally posted by Torgrim

Age of Conan hands down,  This is not an opinion it's fact beacuse they used motion capture.

/thread.

:D   But, I'll certainly check out the Age of Conan now

probably SWTOR

which goes to show, you can spend lots of money on animations and voice and stuff.

and still have a bad game.

Best,if i think best like how my character follows my orders ,when i mash my buttons and how my avatar reacts on those actions ,i think WoW is still the winner and they do it so well that i dont need to watch cooldowns i can time my attacks from my characters animations in many occasions which should be a standard these days.