I don't know what it is with alot of the animations on this game but they just look horrible and poorly done all at once, such as the running and mainly the sprinting animation, I can only assume that who ever did these animations forgot what a human would move like apposed to a mechanical animation with no fluidity to it what so ever, then there's the unneccesary movement animation when let's say I'm attacking with a staff...why do my characters legs turn into some sort of odd spidery like movement? It's seriously the must ugly looking animation I've ever seen for movement in all my years of gaming, the attack animations I can't complain about too much though they leave a lot to be desired still.

Personally I'd love to see some of these animations re-done so they look much less mechanical and more human and fluid, for a game that's supposed to be a AAA style MMO with the elder scrolls name to it, it just feels like the animators on this game either didn't care enough or didn't put the time into doing some good animations or that they were low on budget and just said to do any old job on animations and move on.

Yes it has poorly animation quality.

Random gamer 101 says: Get used to it. Ignorance is bliss, for the blind.

Me like them... Matter of taste it is... Patience you must have, sure they will them upgrade, me think...

Details....

I say this about practically every MMO, but then i just get over/used to it. I do think the running/movement animations are a bit meh, but I will get used to it eventually.

Never noticed "spidery like movement." Any vids/streams you can point to as an example?

Toggle walk on your nord in skyrim.. He walks weighted to the earth , great animation

Now toggle walk on your nord in ESO.. He walks like a Zumba instructor with a piece of coal stuck in his rear end. It's super feminine and awkward looking. Pretty sad

The swimming animation's the only one that really gets me. One arm is stuck out like it was in a cast.

Its true that animations are terrible, but I think that's because of the game Engine more than anything.

For those that don't know, ESO's engine was build from the ground up, but they used the Hero Engine as the prototype. That's why the characters and animations look stiff. I feels almost identical to SWTOR which also used a heavily modified version of the Hero Engine. Bad and stiff animations, as well as instability are the signature traits of the Hero Engine. In fact I could have told you that ESO is based on the Hero Engine even if I didn't know that they used it as a prototype. For those of us who know, this is glaring obvious.

I in my opinion, ZOS should have just used the Unreal engine which can produce infinitely better animations and it is infinitely more stable. (TERA uses the Unreal engine by the way)

Well, tbh, ESO is the only MMO in recent years that I've ever noticed has bad animations, though they are not all bad, thankfully.

The worst are the melee combat animations, especially the basic weapon attacks, which lack any sort of visual or audio detail, visual/audio sync, no flinching, and no hitbox awareness/height awareness. For example, striking tiny rats and spiders looks exactly the same as striking huge room-size monsters, so it looks like you're just whiffing the air with smaller enemies. Multi-strike attack animations like Templar's spear attacks look like you are poking a matchstick into a general cone area (when it works with collision detection. Without collisions it looks even worse because the strikes are not centered and go past or behind the enemy).

The movement animations lack detail and fluidity too and swimming feels like moving through a glass layer (probably not helped by the fact the camera cannot clip below the water level), but on the whole those you can eventually get used to.

The bow animations, or rather on-target feedback while lining up and on landing, could also do with marked improvements.

What ESO does do well are spell animations. The designers managed to make them look good while also "realistic" and in keeping with the franchise.

I didnt see anything wrong...

Some of the animations in Morrowind are better..engine excuse is a poor one

I used to think they were terrible back when they announced the game and showed us the first gameplay footage. It actually put me off the game for the longest time. Since playing the beta though they've vastly improved since back then and were nowhere near as jarring. I can't say they bothered me at all the last time I saw them, and apparently there have been improvements since.

Wait for the release. Who knows what they'll do.

me either. Besides swimming...

Yeah, the engine is of little consequence here.

And no they should have used the Unreal engine. It was made for small closed spaces, not large open worlds. To use the Unreal engine would mean smaller explorable worlds.

IE Mass Effect (I know not multiplayer) and Global Agenda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games

Notice the low numbers of MMOs and those that are have small worlds.

Does any know a good web site that shows the pro and cons of the Hero / Unreal engines? Thanks

I actually prefered the swimming animations here in ESO to the ones in Skyrim; maybe it's a plus of restricting players to the surface only. It seems to be a sort of variation of the side stroke.. not that I've ever tried to swim in full armour with a weapon..

Wow has worse animations, most of them anyway.

Yep, but still the technology used would suit B generic ipad MMO rather then AAA title and it isnt helping much to improve the world. I personally wonder why they chose one of the worst current engines ...Unreal, CryEngine and Frostbite are usually used in AAA titles with a little bit networking added, we might have 999 levels better graphics.

If you're interested in engines also look into CryEngine. It's pretty good. I have no idea how feasible it would be for an MMO though.

One thing I've learned over the years from following many MMO's... Everyone hates the animations in every single one of them.

Aion uses it, though I can't say it works well in that instance.

Not very. Similar to Unreal. Designed for smaller worlds rather then large open spaces.

Prime example. Very few, relatively small maps to play on.

Aren't those single-player game engines? And they didn't choose any engine, they made theirs from scratch.

Cool thanks, I didn't know that. Aion is a really nice game. Visually beautiful world and armours, and the unique elements, gliding and flying were fun.