I think the weirdness in the moving animations is a combination of the body proportions being slightly off, and the actual speed of the run cycle itself.
The loss of player shadow doesn't help as it's only when he's outside in direct sunlight that the player looks like they're actually grounded and physically in the environment. Things like the footprints help but they need to do something for when for when they're in shadow in dungeon etc and don't have a player shadow so it doesn't look like you're just floating around or being composited into the scene.
that and the running animation looks really effeminate. Almost like the mocap actor was a small-framed female and slapped onto a male model and isn't scaling right.
It looks like the character is only marching on the spot to me. The forearms are swinging, but the upper arms seemed to be more locked in place than it should be.
The character looks like he's hanging from strings, like a puppet. The core of the body doesn't move up and down properly. So it looks like it's the character is simply gliding while running.
Archeage, a game from 2013 and that Steven (ashes director) played a lot, still looks better than Ashes gameplay wise. They're focusing so much on making those huge sieges and node systems but none of that matters if the gameplay sucks.
the proof in the pudding will be seeing how well optimised it ends up being and how the engine handles multiple players interacting and casting spells at the same time.
Their priorities during the alpha test showed they have the right priorities at least to make sure the game is enjoyable, hopefully they retain those for the future but its looking good so far.
They already got a video for that optimization out, its pretty good, 1k+ players randomly armored doing animations in a castle 30 fps, thats amazing work done there!
I cant take this game seriously until they actually decide what the classes and combat is or more like actually showing something that looks anything like final version instead of placeholders for everything and billion mounts.
agreed, people keep trying to push this game on me expecting me to get excited but I'm a UE4 dev myself I'd expect it to look this good, show me mechanics that I can care about and maybe we'll see if I get excited.
I mean this is no way near done... Probably will take at least 2-3 years to get anywhere near done. It's to early to judge anything you see. That's why I'm reserved. I like that they are improving the game and changing the game from UE4 to UE5 is a great move but it's so early to tell if it's going to be good. We will see in the next year or so.
@@quz1ree Indeed. However it's been a year or so since the first combat mechanics were shown that I know of, and we have still yet to see any economic mechanics. So to me this release says more about the art department than the actual devs.
Exactly. I see all of this information about new mount and dungeons being developed and I'm just wondering when they're going to polish core gameplay functions. I think there are some misplaced priorities here.
@@drew21t I don't think they will show much of the combat because of the animation that are polished near the end of development, even if they improved combat right now the animation would be unpolished. Oh yeah this was just an announcement for UE5 nothing else tbh... I hope they show as the node system in the near future.
@@almightytrollgod they know about that since before the nda lifted alpha even started :D They just don't care for now cause those kind of polishing changes are meant to be done in the beta
Looks Good Graphics wise but ofc still has a lot ways to go in terms of Animations & Combat Not to mention the Content. Good progress though too early to judge anything
I just wish more games would fully expose all the intricate LOD and Tuning settings if not in the ingame menus than in a CFG files so advanced users with high end hardware do have the option to set their computers on fire by doing things like infinite draw distance with no animation culling if they want to.
When New World came out I was astonished by its graphic and spent $200 for the game and skins. But I stopped playing after just a month. I then realized the content is much more important than graphic for MMO. That is why people are still playing 15 years old WoW classic
Absolutely. This change only really shows off the graphical changes mostly but the optimised features of eu5 should smooth some of the development processes so keeping optimistic.
@@Paul-sk2pc For the most part I have just stopped following AAA studios because while they may make things look pretty corporate corruption and catering to the lowest common denominator ensures the storylines writing and general game mechanics will always be mediocre with no risks taken
Looks cool. Hope they get it all ironed out. Audio has come to be a big deal to me for some reason. I didn't really notice until New World actually. Most mmo audio is so generic and all sounds the same, but New World's audio is so amazing it stood out. Now I hold every game to a higher audible standard.
Despite everyone shitting on New World... The audio and visuals are next level. All the little details they put in really push it to the next level. Just walking around in the world is amazing. Seeing a boar rolling around in the dirt or a Elk making whatever the weird sound it makes... it is just amazing. I'm not saying a game needs to beat New World in these aspects to be good, but New World really set the bar high for the next generation of MMORPGs... or just RPGs in general.
@@jacksheldon8566 Personally I disagree. BDO does look good, but they also use a lot of tricks to hide the bad parts. Heavy blur on the background, overexagerated motion blur, godrays and 2000s bloom like they are going out of style. I would say that BDO does do some visual things really well. Their models, cosmets, skill effects look really good, but that is only a small part of visuals. My visual experience feels hampered when coming back from New World. Its like a bad DLSS for everything but the character models.
I don’t have time for games like this any more. I can barely keep up with current games like NW, GW2 etc. This looks lime another job tbh lol. IRL is hard enough these days haha.
@@mohammedtahseen3934 I get what you're saying, but mmorpgs are pretty grindy at their core. As an adult , I would much rather play something like Rocket League or MTG so I can jump in and out of quick matches.
Nobody is forcing you to play multiple mmo's mate, GW2 is old and honestly doesn't seem to pop up in anyone's radar and new world is rolling downhill to to it's downfall, pick one that you have most fun with, for me being ff14 and just roll with it, take breaks as you see fit and remember RL takes priority
@@Bladerune Guild Wars 2 just had some of the best months its had in years. Just because it isn't on your radar doesn't mean it's not on others. Play the games you enjoy though, no hate.
I know this is a fairly old video of yours, but it's so sweet to see you excited about a game and discussing things you're really into! I am gonna try clicking around more of these :) hope you are keeping well Mr Kira!
My thoughts summarized: gorgeous game, interesting mobs (I like the plant dogs), particle effects need to be toned down a good 90% still, inspiring scenery, and there are a lot of small and medium sized things that need to be tweaked and fixed but for the love of the gods please just have the gameplay exceed these incredible graphics. That's all that anyone will truly care about at the end of the day. Cool technical demo though.
That's my worry. I personally don't care much about next gen graphics, and I just hope they devote sufficient resources to content/mechanics/lore instead of getting too bogged down in perfecting things like particle effects and cloth physics. What makes me optimistic is that the game is funded by a rich guy who seems really passionate about his game. Even if the game ends up being something that's not for me I still respect his passion and the ambitiousness of the project.
The fact they are doing this switch at all shows just how little they have done. Even when staying within a series of engines like Unreal going from one version to another is a huge undertaking unless all you really have is art assets and utilizing pre-packaged tools. Animations look odd because they are using "split body" rigging and its not set up well.
Yea this is a bit concerning. I start my teaching career next year, id have liked this game to release when I had actual time to play it but oh well lmao.
I'm pretty open minded but... we haven't seen any good gameplay yet. The combat we've seen so far was absolutely atrocious. They did state they were working on it, but in the meantime I have no resson to be hyped.
They still are missing the improved combat mechanics, the crafting systems, a fully functioning node system, thousands of quests to enable to quest based leveling process among other things. Now they have seemingly spent months in making the game U5 compatible. It remains to be seen if they can make that new engine run smooth in actual mass pvp combat.
Am I wrong to be bothered by them having a talking point of the game being “fully funded by the devs” yet selling founder packs for hundreds of dollars? Beta and alpha access also seem to be locked behind $75 and $250 paywalls respectively? Or am I not understanding it correctly?
the running doesn't feel like he's making contact with the ground very much, might not help that we can't hear the footsteps but it just seems a bit bouncy and hovery
That climbing ability is something often missing from most other games, a small detail that adds so much in a game i assume would have lots of terrain exploration and navigating. And non-slip floor ice is always helpful when not wanting to faceplant, but probably not too much of a problem when it's the best-lit cave ever. Would've liked to see how the framerate holds up during some melee, and maybe if shiny armor becomes a lighting problem with all the particle effect. But pretty good looking gameplay overall, hope the game shapes up to be what people are looking forward to.
The lighting on the actual character model is still 'off' in my opinion. While there are some reflections on the metallic parts of their armor, there is absolutely no change on any of the cloth pieces, so it breaks the realisim when going between major differences in light sources. For example, at 7:30 the character walks into a spotlight beam coming from a break in the upper cave. Yet the lighting on the actual characters model doesn't change almost at all. Soon as he walks into the light and nothing changed, it really breaks that feel for me. (It does look better around 12:40 ish though, but as Kira pointed out in that scene, the texture resolution looks pretty terrible for the environment. Almost like they flipped which assets should be high-res vs. low-res based on culling and distance.) The movement feels off as well because the model is too small in relation to the world. It feels more like the models are minitures. Some slight increase in their size would probably fix that feel while not having to change the world itself. (Model animations, timing, etc. would need adjustments as well to account for the size change.)
Some other spots where the shadowing is pretty obviously bad/incorrect: 5:54 - Look at the ground, there is a shadow that has a bad framerate and is also not aliased properly. 6:20 - Anytime the player model is on a darker surface, there is absolutely no shadow casted at all, This isn't correct to realism. It makes the model look more like an injected asset into the scene than part of the world. 7:14 - The shadows inside of the cave on the walls don't feel real/proper. There are a lot of blocking surfaces that should be darker, edges around the base of the rocks should have less visible light, the player model is not casting any shadow at all which isn't proper. Even in a dimmer lit area, you are still casting a shadow to some degree. There is literally none here. (It's not until 7:33 when the model is just in front of the casted light from the sky that a shadow appears.) 7:38 - The light casted into the cave should be reflecting into the walls/plants, but it doesn't. There are no shadows at all on the plants just to the sides of the light source. The walls also have no change in the lighting levels as you get further away. This makes this area look really poor/unrealistic. At this spot too when the player is standing still, the shadow is missing the model details, such as the weapon is not casting a a shadow when it should. (The other arm on the model is casted but the one holding the weapon is not.) 8:45 - If you slow down the video, and watch the shadows of the enemies, they are also wrong and detached. For the first few seconds, the middle shadow is not connected to the body shadow at all and just looks like its floating, the neck shadow is missing entirely. 8:54 - The players model shadowing doesn't change properly when going under the edge of the cave into the next room. The light level stays exactly the same from the first room, to under the rock, to the start of the next room. The only surface being affected when moving into the second room is the metalic plates of the armor. You'll also see the character casts absolutely no shadow at all on the ground, not even basic foot shadows when stepping, this is really off. This spot also shows a problem with the lighting effects from other objects. The players wand has a glowing blue tint to it. Yet, going under the cave rock as well as having the wand closer to their player/armor never casts any blue light. 9:32 - When the player is rolling and using an animation, the animation is incorrectly locked to the players rotation. This makes it look like an obvious sprite, out of place. There is also no lighting coming from any of the effects being done, making them look entirely out of place.
My points with this are that it doesn't feel like they have Lumin setup properly for all surfaces/objects. And are not taking advantage of all the aspects it has to offer. The easiest comparison video to show what it can/should do for all the issues I listed above is the PS5 tech demo Unreal showed. It shows a much better usage of the newer lighting system Unreal offers. Hope to see them fix things up. I have no interest in this game personally, but would love to see them succeed and show the potential of Unreal 5 in an MMO.
Yeah, the way that the characters are scaled in proportion to the world, as you described.. It really breaks the game for me completely. That and the animation. Its like some minituare toys indeed. Its jarringly bad. After BDO which I think did the best in this department of animations and world scaling, I cant go "back" to something like this, its like a big downgrade. The UE5 graphics are nice, but its also the characters and how they feel in the world that is also very important.
All feedback is good feedback! Mostly.. they had to delay getting this video out meaning its likely this was a push before xmas but also being alpha its very early in the development cycle. I dont expect the game to be perfect but steven is very community focused which is what gives us alot of hope.
Im from future so...UE's 5.3 solve its problems thanks to its new features from 5.1 all the way to 5.3 (Nanite Foliage now enables to all assets including plants, trees, and of couse landscapes)
Honestly, I think they're yet to focus on the animations, not the spell animations or not in a wide scope sort of say, maybe add a stand still and then walk animation instead of directly slightly floating above the ground, maybe raise their leg depending on the surface like in genshin where they put their leg on higher ground just to keep the usual standing posture etc... there are ways to improve and if the community suggests it, I'm sure they'll polish it more in the future but I guess we'll see
This has been a consistent problem for them as well. They've never been able to make a character look like they actually belong in the game. They all look to be floating, or otherwise separated from the terrain somehow.
I feel like, at sOme point, an MMO is going to come out and hit every graphic, gameplay, RP, casually harddcore, gear progression, leveling intense, end game content sweet spot that we all crave but dont know it. And be a true succesor to old era MMOs. I hope I live long enough to see it.
peak microphone quality! just wanted to follow up a bit since I made that comment a week ago ish. Sound quality has improved. Dude being low is not at all your fault. That's a result of recording your audio with a gaming headset or a work headset and not a proper condenser microphone
i am a bit concerned because althought they really focus on the enviroment, other aspects of the game are still very barebones. I really hope they finish with the enviroment structure and design and get a bit more in-depth with everything else.
I think the reason why the running /walking animation looks somewhat off is because the upper and lower body animation doesn’t really work together, it’s a very light hopping running animation which lacks to put weight in the characters movement.
Totally agree on the character movement. We spend the VAST majority of our time looking at our character run around and Ashes still hasn't got it right. But I'm hoping they'll work on it. I just don't know how or why any animator would've coded it like this in the first place.
I finally get why the movement looks weird. Its the torso dude. The torso is almost floating it doesnt feel attatched to the legs. It doesnt bend a little foward when the character walks. The character movements looks animated by diferent teams in diferent rooms and then they matched it togheter aftewards. But yeah other than this, the game already looks insane
100% agree about the character. It’s like the avatar is a miniature in a normal sized world and the feet move faster than the ground or something. It reminds me of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or Pikmin. It’s Pikmin! The more I watch the more it reminds me of playing it.
I think it's the camera position. Not entirely sure, but when the camera is directly behind the character, it just looks odd. Maybe they need to raise the position?
As someone who is not really looking forward to new MMOs (but do try to keep up to date with them), we had many great looking MMOs before that were quite... meh in everything else. Not saying this will be but honestly, graphics are one of the last things I care about in MMOs, and in many other games too, as those very rarely make or break a game for me and a "meh" game won't have me keep playing it just because it is pretty.
One thing you have to give to the AoC videos - they aren't just a bunch of cinematics claiming to be "gameplay", they are actually in-game scenes. Definitely something on the plus side in my book. 🙂
The character looks and feels disconnected from the map. It looks like it's running/floating a couple inches off the ground. There's also a lack of effects at his feet that tie the two together. He's running through snow, but the snow isn't reacting to it, there's no sense that the character has weight, etc. The game is probably a couple years from releasing, so hopefully they can address these details in time.
I think the weird looking thing about the characters posture is the body being "top" heavy? You see it very clearly when the figure squats, the lower body looks dwarfed compared to the upper body. And there is something about how the upper body doesn't move in sync with the pelvis and lower body...
I agree, running seems like movement when you step in small hole in night. When you like anticipate solid ground but its 5 cm deeper and then is this fast feet clap. Hmm I also think that there somewhere hips and shoulders is disproportional or even leg lenght. But maybe thats just result of char customization
Guild Wars 2 did pretty well. Timeless artstyle, fluent animations /combat and good ambience (even if they could implement some more music). But that should be standard to a good longliving MMO.
The running animation is faster than the running speed and he lifts his knees too high like he's running through water or tall grass. The fact that he has both feet off the ground for most of the animation implies he's running a lot faster, but he's only moving at jogging speed. The shadow often doesn't start at the feet and leaves a gap which makes it look like he is hovering a bit. His feet real small too.
Maybe the thing with the movement that's sticking out to you, is that it looks like the character is floating just slightly above the ground. You can see that the shadow doesn't come all the way up to your character's feet; making it look like he's floating slightly.
It's really nice to see you looking forward to something so passionately, Kira! I really hope the project works out for you as much as it does for Intrepid.
I love UE5 and I made it my exclusive engine. As for the game, I like this demo and this guy is really doing a great job with his project. That being said, his character animations are a relatively simple fix. All he needs to do is clip the animations a bit. Now as for the snow, stretching is common and he could add more depth with a good normal map. That would help fool the eye a bit. I would imagine that it would all be on the to do list.
The environmental art assets aren't worse in areas they just don't have light hitting them/aren't casting shadows, so you see the bare low res geometry effectively with no normal maps/depth maps applied.
need footsteps of the character to help fix the disconnected feel, it probably *does* have footsteps however they are played from the characters feet and the audio is heard from the camera, thus he cannot hear his own footsteps and the monster attacks are very loud because they are closer to the camera so its a bit jarring 15:40 onward for a bit
I agree that everything close to the player has some weird bluriness to it and the ground looks very...flat. The rocks also looks very blocky and chiseled out, not natural and erroded. It might be just me, but it seems to get even blurrier when there is camera movement? Trees looks very...stiff? Everything that is lit up by light looks awesome though. If everything looks as good as it does in lumen/light areas, it will be awesome. Spell effects and glowing effects in general are still a bit to glowy for me. Enemys glows, spells glows, puddles glows...purple and green hasa tendacy to really stand out.
The landscapes are really pretty, but the character and the monsters seem to have a different kind of texture than the landscape, and therefore they look slightly out of place in the world, but I guess that this can be fixed.
To answer your question at 3:54 other than the character floating on non-flat surfaces. The character Running Animation is sped up to look natural what the faster movement Ps the character is floating above the ground in general
The reason why the character is not really fitting in might be the feet placement. To me it seems like they are missing foot IK. the feet seem very mispositioned a lot of times. if thats the case it would be easy to fix though
The shadow is slightly detached from the character, makes it look like he's floating slightly above ground. And the snow decals they placed there went onto high verticality which usually makes them look very low-res - there's just few horizontal dots on a very large surface, so to speak. Or that's what I assume might be the case, haven't worked with unreal yet. Also, did you notice the extremely static mount movements? Reminds me of Lord of the Rings Online. Hope they make the transition from e.g. forward to climb smoother.
Looks like the character is floating very slightly off the ground, especially on uneven terrain. Sort of like in EQ with levitate or DMF on, but without the bobbling up and down (what is odd is that the mounts walking doesn't have this issue, seems like they spent more time on mounts than on characters), and that tilting while running looks super odd, no one does that in real life, tilting your upper body sideways while running full speed. That ice looks really good though.
I hope fonts and UI is just placeholder and not something they want to have as default or at least some options. Spell animations obviously have to change. Other than that... World....OMG. Looks, sounds, lighting...
Yeah I think the animations aren't like full enough, that's what's weird to me. Like they are walking with faster animations instead of a jogging animation or when they jump there isn't enough movement to match the distance jumped. That sort of thing
Good reaction! He at playing in 4k in a 2080, so not bad at all. And don't know why, but the video in the stream looks smoother than the one they uploaded to youtube. Maybe they messed up uploading?
Improving models props and such should be an easy win since most objects are created at a higher poly/texture then lowered to work on what ever system needed.
Re: character movement odd. I don't think the shadow is lined up right. Giving a weird illusion thst he's floating. But then you see that the feet are on the ground so your brain dismisses that and you can't put it together.
Looks pretty good, excited to see how it actually turns out in the end. Hopefully, while they are bringing the game together and polishing everything someone is taking notes on what not to do from New World so that when the game does launch we can all enjoy it for longer than a month.
As long as the movement doesn't impact anything combat related i dont mind it looking a slight bit off. The movement is easily shippable as it is right now.
I think with the character movement... There is too much movement of the forearm (in the elbow) and not enough in the shoulders. When someone runs there is almost no movement in the elbow... So I think that is the problem.
Just to reassure people somewhat, intrepid are currently on the market for a senior animations developer. They dont rush these appointments as they want passionate and talented people as well as in studio staff so its a small pool. But that does mean they are aware they want to increase the quality of animations so long as they fill this spot i am sure the quality will improve across the board.
Love this game and been following it for years. The spell effects are so so so bright and over the top. I really hope when final pass is done they dial it back literally 50 to 60% lol. It’s just too much visually looks like a single player game effects wise.
Whenever I watch an ashes update video I always end up feeling underwhelmed. Might certainly be due to me not knowing how game development at an alpha stage goes tho Also I dont really like the art style but that's not really a hot take
I'm at uni studying software engineer. What you look at an alpha is that all systems exist. They may not be good looking or ideal, but they exist in some way that reflects the direction of the game.
That's completely reasonable considering they only have a single game mechanic that's remotely interesting (town nodes), everything else is pretty standard
@@egemenozan5641 totally respectable. They are creating excitement for their product, and it's normal if you aren't interested. The only thing that we can do is wait.
I'll get excited when they show us some gameplay of the final combat system. Like they keep saying they're working on it so I'm just waiting for them to show us what it's actually gonna be. Graphically it could be the prettiest game in the world but that doesn't mean much if gameplay isn't fun.
I have little to no hope for Ashes. It's creative director "Steven Sharif" was a very prominent archeage player in 2017. He was the type of person that would just buy all of his gear, and lose fights to undergeared players because he had no real game sense. His name in-game was Sorcerer.
Looks really nice, but as you mentioned the movement is clunky, I would wish that the movement would feel like watching fellowship of the ring and watching Aragorn run through the forest. Additionally there seems to be zero feel of impact in battles. Without numbers popping on to the screen you could not tell if you have hit the enemy or if the enemy has struck you. During the battle with the cat enemy on the ice, I found myself surprised when that red -5 hp text popped up even through the cat was nowhere near our protagonist, almost like the cat was damaging him with an aura of some sort.. EDIT: One more thing. There doesn't seem to be weight impact to the hero or monsters but everything (unless landing from a jump) seems to be able to stop on a spot without any movement momentum. For example if a monster is chasing you to a cliff like in one scene, it would be nice to see that the monster is not able to stop on a spot and might occasionally be carried over the cliff by its momentum before able to stop.
This is what i'm talking about. Finally some actual game dev proven. love your ashes content. 3:34 to me it seems like ground movement to character leg spread is a little off, moves faster then actually looks. simple fix would be to give a little longer strides or slow us down a little. but i notice what you do. i think.
I'm sure the artists have been working so far within the confines of UE4. Just imagine how much better it will get now that they have the go-ahead to develop in UE5 with nanite/lumen!
Your right about the feet something is off. The other flaw is the stiff shoulders there's not enough fluid motion, honestly looks bit like when you sleep funny and can't turn your head. Edit: I watched a bit more and the head and upperback/shoulders don't move independently as you move the camera. They could put a tiny delay onto the shoulders so the head moves with the camera first before the rest of the body follows.
Been a backer for this game since 2017. I am EXTREMELY hopeful, very skeptical, and cautiously optimistic. I would suggest that this change will add another 2 years to the project though, if you consider other games that are further along in development and also made the move to UE5, we've seen these get delayed by a year or more already.
It looks weird when the character runs, because they aren't shifting his weight properly when they animate it. Normally you'd add a bit of hip movement so that the center of balance goes over the supporting foot. They haven't done that and it looks very wrong. Telltale is looking at the hip centerpoint and notice it not moving and staying centered. I'm sure its something they can change, but weird that they'd animate it this way.
I hate/love how they show all these beautiful flying mounts we'll (most of us) never get to have.? My understanding is flying mounts (Royal Mounts) are only available to Mayors of Metropolis, Kings and Queens of Guild Castles only. If you're not one of those then you only get Land Mounts.
