Updated Racial Animations

[username993720]

It's time blizzard updated some of the racial trait animations, like:

Stoneform
An actual stone textures:

Rather than gray coloring:


Escape Artist
An actual escaping animation, like this:

Instead of this swirling animation:


Darkflight
An actual darkening of the character and a dark trail animation:

Rather than a sprint animation:


Rocket Jump
An actual rocket animation:

Instead of a fart animation:


Rocket Barrage
An actual barrage of rockets:

Instead of one lousy rocket:


Blood Fury
Red glowing eyes & a roar emote and sound effect:

Instead of a shaman icon and glowing hands:


Berserking
Orange glowing eyes, tattoos and weapons:

Instead of the same animation as the orc Blood Fury animation:

[omeomorfismo]

fuck animations! i want to cannibalize my allies!
#freecannibalize

[Eurhetemec]

Oh dear.

I totally get where you're coming from OP, but you immediately start with an example that shows you don't understand the underlying issues. The "textured" stoneform you show had to be textured to that SPECIFIC outfit. You can't just generically slap a stone texture on all characters and expect results like that.

I've played games which did. And the results were WORSE than the dark grey WoW uses.

Some of your other examples are reasonable, and some are equally conceptually flawed.

EDIT: Going through one-by-one:

1) Stoneform - What you propose won't work or look great with current tech. They could tweak what they have to be more grey and less black but that's about it. Non-viable.

2) Escape Artist - All they really need to do here is have a flip or spin or jump animation instead of the swirl. There's probably one they can already use. Viable.

3) Darkflight - Dark trail animation is definitely doable. Viable.

4) Rocket Jump & Rocket Barrage - Seems like you want really ridiculous and showy animations for two abilities which are pretty minor. That doesn't make sense. If rocket jump threw you dozens of yards, or rocket barrage did damage like the space-laser that Lightforged Draenei had, then maybe, but neither is the case. Non-viable or rather, unreasonable.

5) Bloodfury - Should be doable in SL at least, probably doable now. Viable.

6) Berserking - Certainly needs updating. Glowing tattoos seems a bit character-specific though, and not necessarily appropriate for all Trolls. Viable but I wouldn't do it like you suggest.

Even new abilities need looking at though - the Lightforged space-laser is barely visible, as is their death-explosion.

[Schizoide]

The OP makes strong points overall. Racial abilities are just trinkets that everybody has. So it makes sense to spend dev and artist time making them cool, because they'll get used as frequently as core class abilities. It's obviously worth their effort making Raging Blow and Fireball look cool; racials get just as much exposure.

[Mirishka]

Oh dear.

I totally get where you're coming from OP, but you immediately start with an example that shows you don't understand the underlying issues. The "textured" stoneform you show had to be textured to that SPECIFIC outfit. You can't just generically slap a stone texture on all characters and expect results like that.

I've played games which did. And the results were WORSE than the dark grey WoW uses.

Some of your other examples are reasonable, and some are equally conceptually flawed.

It is a breath of fresh air to see posts from people who actually get the technical stuff.

/applauds

[Razion]

Oh dear.

I totally get where you're coming from OP, but you immediately start with an example that shows you don't understand the underlying issues. The "textured" stoneform you show had to be textured to that SPECIFIC outfit. You can't just generically slap a stone texture on all characters and expect results like that.

Didn't they do this with Barkskin though?

[Soon-TM]

(bunch of cool pics)

It would really be nice to see that. I was thinking also about brand new animations for e.g. Light of the Naaru or Arcane Torrent. Those 2007 animations really hurt my eyes

[Eurhetemec]

Didn't they do this with Barkskin though?

Have you SEEN Barkskin though? It looks absolutely godawful. It looks like a texture error. Like literally the first time I cast it in it's modern form, I thought it had gone wrong. It was only when I used it repeatedly that I realized, no, that's what it's supposed to look like. It doesn't look anything like the perfectly precise texturing the OP has - instead it looks like a blurry brown mess.

[Razion]

Have you SEEN Barkskin though? It looks absolutely godawful. It looks like a texture error. Like literally the first time I cast it in it's modern form, I thought it had gone wrong. It was only when I used it repeatedly that I realized, no, that's what it's supposed to look like. It doesn't look anything like the perfectly precise texturing the OP has - instead it looks like a blurry brown mess.

I'd agree Barkskin looks pretty awful, and maybe that's to accommodate for lower-end PCs, but it does represent that it may be possible if not now then eventually.

[Eurhetemec]

I'd agree Barkskin looks pretty awful, and maybe that's to accommodate for lower-end PCs, but it does represent that it may be possible if not now then eventually.

Oh dear.

Okay, dude, you're falling into the same trap as the OP. You could massively increase the resolution and so on of the Barkskin texture, but it'll still look like total dogshit. Because overlaying generic textures on specific models does not look great generally (there are rare exceptions, but stone/wood ain't them).

In the future? Not with that approach. Never with that approach. With a different approach? Like, I dunno, in say 2026 using ray-tracing and rendering the model as if it's stone? Maybe that would would work well (all sorts of crazy visual improvements could happen that way), but not until even shoddy PCs have strong ray-tracing capable video cards.

[Razion]

Oh dear.

Okay, dude, you're falling into the same trap as the OP. You could massively increase the resolution and so on of the Barkskin texture, but it'll still look like total dogshit. Because overlaying generic textures on specific models does not look great generally (there are rare exceptions, but stone/wood ain't them).

In the future? Not with that approach. Never with that approach. With a different approach? Like, I dunno, in say 2026 using ray-tracing and rendering the model as if it's stone? Maybe that would would work well (all sorts of crazy visual improvements could happen that way), but not until even shoddy PCs have strong ray-tracing capable video cards.

I mean if going over each and every separate armor model in the entire game is such a terrible outcome, and if players really want the racial ability to look really good, maybe they can have the form just go over the base race's model? Just be a stone dwarf for the duration with maybe no armor, or maybe they lose their current armor and wear some Mountain King armor? This way they could only focus on making the one model and maybe it would work properly then. But I guess if they went that route maybe it wouldn't match your character's customization, but maybe the idea of the racial is to transform into that image of the Mountain King anyway. Would people be okay with that?

[Eurhetemec]

I mean if going over each and every separate armor model in the entire game is such a terrible outcome, and if players really want the racial ability to look really good, maybe they can have the form just go over the base race's model? Just be a stone dwarf for the duration with maybe no armor, or maybe they lose their current armor and wear some Mountain King armor? This way they could only focus on making the one model and maybe it would work properly then. But I guess if they went that route maybe it wouldn't match your character's customization, but maybe the idea of the racial is to transform into that image of the Mountain King anyway. Would people be okay with that?

That's something Blizzard would have to answer - my guess is people would prefer the current re-colour (or an improved version of that - it is too black and not grey enough, I think) over being transformed into some totally generic "mountain king" dude. People really like their customizations.

[username993720]

Oh dear.

I totally get where you're coming from OP, but you immediately start with an example that shows you don't understand the underlying issues. The "textured" stoneform you show had to be textured to that SPECIFIC outfit. You can't just generically slap a stone texture on all characters and expect results like that.

I've played games which did. And the results were WORSE than the dark grey WoW uses.

Some of your other examples are reasonable, and some are equally conceptually flawed.

EDIT: Going through one-by-one:

1) Stoneform - What you propose won't work or look great with current tech. They could tweak what they have to be more grey and less black but that's about it. Non-viable.

2) Escape Artist - All they really need to do here is have a flip or spin or jump animation instead of the swirl. There's probably one they can already use. Viable.

3) Darkflight - Dark trail animation is definitely doable. Viable.

4) Rocket Jump & Rocket Barrage - Seems like you want really ridiculous and showy animations for two abilities which are pretty minor. That doesn't make sense. If rocket jump threw you dozens of yards, or rocket barrage did damage like the space-laser that Lightforged Draenei had, then maybe, but neither is the case. Non-viable or rather, unreasonable.

5) Bloodfury - Should be doable in SL at least, probably doable now. Viable.

6) Berserking - Certainly needs updating. Glowing tattoos seems a bit character-specific though, and not necessarily appropriate for all Trolls. Viable but I wouldn't do it like you suggest.

Even new abilities need looking at though - the Lightforged space-laser is barely visible, as is their death-explosion.

I did take it into consideration, it's just an example of how it should look in contrast with the current one.

this guy proposed a rather interesting solution:

I mean if going over each and every separate armor model in the entire game is such a terrible outcome, and if players really want the racial ability to look really good, maybe they can have the form just go over the base race's model? Just be a stone dwarf for the duration with maybe no armor, or maybe they lose their current armor and wear some Mountain King armor? This way they could only focus on making the one model and maybe it would work properly then. But I guess if they went that route maybe it wouldn't match your character's customization, but maybe the idea of the racial is to transform into that image of the Mountain King anyway. Would people be okay with that?

[Powerogue]

These all sound great. Escape could potentially use any number of monk animations like the flip, but unique animations for racials would be swell. It adds character. Now is the perfect time to do so since they're adding new customization to old races.

How about one for the pandaren where every single time you get the improved well fed buff you do their unique "OM NOM NOM" /eat emote noise? Or we actually make a "boing" noise when we take falling damage to indicate the "bouncy" racial? Amazing, or would get tedious eventually? IDK.