This might sound petty, but if a MMO’s movement sucks then my interest in the game is immediately diminished. My first, and coincidentally clearest, memory of LotRO is the wonky movement. GW2 has wonky movement too. When characters ‘slide’ across the ground or don’t appear to be making connection and reaction to the ground, I can’t get over how bad it looks.
Let’s tie animations into this too. I want characters to react to hitting and being hit — feedback of some sort. Is it too much to ask to have a game look good when something moves?
Wildstar is growing on my radar, and they released a clever little promotional video showcasing various movement and animation clips.
There’s a hip new trend to add all sorts of new movement abilities to MMOs. Double jumps, active sprinting, active dodging, active blocking, dashing, etc. I don’t need all of these unless the fundamentals are absolutely perfect, and even then I hate — yes hate — when they get overused. Anyone else sick to death of dodging in GW2? I’ve said it before and I’ll said it again: rolling around on the floor in a dungeon every two seconds isn’t awesome, it’s ridiculous.
Even when running and swinging a sword look great, do I need to double jump or dodge? It gets a little comedic and arcade-like. Not that this is a bad thing, because they’re going for that motif in Wildstar, but it is most definitely defining, and not for every game.
Movement should be visually appealing, ‘feel’ perfect, and not be gimmicky. I have extremely high expectations, but if you can’t get movement right I won’t be surprised if the rest of the game stands still.
I agree. I would add Rift into the list of bad movement/animations and is the reason I did not played it. The weird thing is that even if I bored to hell the dodge roll in gw2 I did not bored the double jump in Age of Wushu 1 month now 🙂 I guess is because it has the perfect feel…time will tell
As for Wildstar, I don’t want to throw big words, but I am not liking it at all. The graphics style and the character models is not for my taste and in an rpg if I don’t like my character I can’t play it. I am not asking for super korean models, even in wow I like some character models, but in wildstar as far as I have seen I don’t..
It’s astounding to me how many MMOs get movement wrong. It’s hard to describe, but you can instantly feel it when the movement is off. Wonky movement definitely turns me off a game.
For all its faults, I think WoW has movement nailed. No other MMO I play has character’s that feel as responsive and smooth as WoW, even after all these years.
I totally agree, it does sound petty.
It’s astounding to me that any MMOs get movement right because while you can instantly feel it when the movement is off, it’s extremely hard to describe.
On the other hand I dismissed Warhammer Online out of hand for exactly this crime. I’m a shocking hypocrite.
Uncanny Valley applies I think. GW2s mad-slidez are too far from the valley to disturb me, they just look like bugs to me.
I never noticed it. Well, some game have better animations than others, but it never bothered me enough to quit any game
Movement is weird in that it can be really jarring at first but once I get into the game it is barely noticeable. I find when I go between WoW and LOTRO at first LOTRO feels super floaty but after about 30-40 minutes of play I get used to the movement and don’t notice it anymore. Rift is the same way, at first the movement feels terrible but once I start playing it doesn’t bother me.
GW2 movement never bothered me (possibly cause I mainly played Asura) but even after playing for awhile the disconnected combat still bugs me and is the main reason I was never able to fully get into that game. Some classes are better than others but often it felt I was just swinging a weapon at the air and sometimes something took damage. Contrast to Tera where everything felt incredibly solid in the movement and combat.
SWTOR is one where the movement always felt off too, characters ran so stiff and upright like there legs were attached to a piece of plywood.
Ideally a game would have nice fluid movement but if the rest of the game is enjoyable I can overlook it, SWTOR I didn’t like the rest of the game so the movement always bugged me.
To be honest I rather like the movement in MMOs. I was never a big fan of tab targeting type of combat and really only tolerated it because world immersion was also important and all the good world MMOs used it.
UO was also a very movement heavy MMO, in a different way than the current arcade wannabes but still heavily movement oriented. To be honest i think it like it far more than tab and hot-bar.
As is usually the case of late, I largely agree with you, Keen. Especially about the endless dodge-rolling in GW2, which makes every fight remind me of the free expression session in a toddlers’ playgroup.
I never had a problem with movement in general in GW2, but imem above makes a very interesting point. Right from the earliest EQ days it’s been obvious to me that one’s experience of movement in any MMO is crucially dependent on the height of the character. Remember how incredibly slow, awkward and lumbering it felt to be playing an Ogre, while gnomes felt like they had perma-SoW on roller-skates?
Only yesterday as my Norn elementalist lumbered across Yak’s Bend Borderland trying to catch up with the action I was complaining that even with a speed buff on she seemed to move at half the speed of my Asuras. This is one reason why I almost always play the shortest available race in every MMO.
The best movement I’ve ever experienced in third person was Dark Souls.
Totally agree with tristan……
This looks like Jak & Daxter-y/Ratchet & Clank-y.
I want.
I think there are two things to separate when talking about movement. There are the mechanics of movement and the aesthetics of movement.
Mechanically movement is fundamental it defines so much to a game. Pacing (pardon the pun) is really driven (damn i’m on a roll) by movement. How fast you travel, if you can teleport across the world, if you get a mount… all have a major impact on a game. That can even determine the scope of your world. They can slow down the game make it take longer to complete quests, make the combat feel fast paced, or anywhere in between just by adjusting simple values in the coding. Mechanically, I don’t really care much about movement unless you can’t jump. That bugs me. Also if I have time to heat up pizza while I auto run to the next town.
Aesthetics of movement will always improve and to me are simply a way to simply gauge the polish of a game. If you have clipping, or floating, or unrealistic/broken style movement your game lacks a needed polish. It is also very telling like you said Keen of the polish of the rest of the game.
I think I can look past some aesthetic issues with movement if the mechanics are solid, fun, and interesting, but if the mechanics are boring then those footsteps better look great. 😛
@yotor: I agree.
Likewise, being able to do basic things like jump, or wade across a river, or swim in a pond… if I can’t do those I’m bugged. (I just decided to give Fallen Earth another try, and when my character was blocked from even entering water I was immediately annoyed.)