Guild Wars 2

Shanna.4762:

Exosferatu.2961:

notebene.3190:

Exosferatu.2961:

One-handed weapons are clipping through forearms by just standing still. By the way, I like the new animation.

I prefer the old animation, especially with respect to the other issues it seems to have caused.

What is missing is understanding what was wrong with (aside from anecdotal evidence) it that they felt the need to assign money, a modeler (modelers?) and time to changing it, causing other graphics issues in the process? Was there performance issues? Is it the cause of the lag some people experience in big events? Was it impacting the economy somehow?

I would think in the spirit of collaboration, they would have a forum somewhere indicating possible changes, why they are thinking of making them (the why, always missing is the why with them), and give us a chance to weigh in. If I end up being in a 10% losing bracket, I would concede, and take my money elsewhere.

Which, I guess is on me. I should have been more wary about spending $20 on two armor skin packs to outfit a new character I created, supporting the company’s efforts to provide more skins through the gem store, knowing that at any moment, they would make a drastic change to how a character model that was wearing that clothing looked when wearing it.

I don’t know, it makes me sad. I don’t enjoy spending time in the world with my characters at all, they feel broken and look odd to me. Hopefully my $20 goes to something useful, I guess.

I don’t know, I like being tomboyish. I’m tired of the girly animation like female norns, no offense.

You might like being tomboyish, but what about everyone else? I certainly didn’t make my character with the intent on her running like a man. I get what you’re saying, but the bottom line is that most people made their characters over a year ago, and like the way they felt, preferences on being feminine or a tomboy aside. It’s a shame that we cannot toggle different running styles, but honestly my female human mesmer looks ridiculous in her mesmer dress & running like this and I’m willing to bet a majority of people made female humans because they liked the feminine-ness of them compared to the other races which are overwhelmingly “tomboyish” already.

What other races are “tomboyish”? The norn female with the enormous chest? The cuddly asura female? The bouncy sylvari female? Even the charr females are far from “tomboyish” and clearly have feminine animations.

At the end of the day all this discussion proved was that a lot of people like the change, a lot of people don’t. It’s impossible to please everyone. Personally I hate how everything clips through my Asura’s robes but it’s been that way for a year and I’m not expecting any changes soon, there are much more pressing issues to deal with.

Yeah, but they had a non-clipping version for 2 handed weapons just a few days ago. It really bugs me that they actively changed it with a clipping version.

She … looks like she’s running. It doesn’t look manly. You guys have some really weird standards for “femininity.”

Sjofn.7418:

She … looks like she’s running. It doesn’t look manly. You guys have some really weird standards for “femininity.”

If everything was fine before, and she also to me looked like she … was running, why did there need to be a change? I’m not making an argument of ‘what’ her running should be labeled before or after. I know I liked it before, and it was fine and didn’t impact the economy or effect PvP/WvW standings nor provide anyone with any sort of game advantage.

It seems like an awful lot of work and money and time to change something that many of us thought was just fine for 13+ months.

I’m more angry about the principle of the change than the change itself (with the exception of the 2-handed sheathed issue). I would rather have the change back, as I ‘really’ enjoyed how it was originally. I suspect that will have about as much of a chance happening as getting a blu-ray release with Han shooting first or an E.T. where the FBI agents are standing around waving guns (instead of CGI walkie-talkies).

I thought she looked goofy before. Now she looks less goofy. So I guess I cancel you out.

It’s less the OMG WORST WASTE OF RESOURCES EVER handwringing I’m taking issue with anyway. It’s the OMG MANLIEST RUN EVER handwringing my post was addressing.

Sjofn.7418:

I thought she looked goofy before. Now she looks less goofy. So I guess I cancel you out.

Each should be about choices and options, not about taking away something that was perfectly fine, and some people were happy with for 13+ months.

I’d ‘love’ for you to have your run. I would also like very much to keep mine. Why can’t we have both, and let us choose?

Of course, if you really cancel me out, then the net is 0 and then nothing should have been done. Yet, something was done, and I’d like to know why.

As a last thing to point out, I am pretty sure the people who screw around with animations are not the same people who work on, say, balance issues. At least, I sure as hell hope not.

But again, I don’t really care too much that it was done, or that people think it shouldn’t have been done because they are positive changing the running animation set back buffing ranger pets six months or whatever. The issue I have are the people acting like the new animation is the manliest running animation in the history of MMOs.

there’s some kind of audio mix up for female asura as well. my asura character now constantly making an irritating moaning sound whenever I stomping someone in wvw or using an elite/healing skills. this sounds so odd and out of place it makes me wanna quit playing female asura character. something’s definitely not right…

as for the new running animtaion for human female…
I’ve used human female as my main since the game launch and seeing them running like a man with dislocated shoulders all of sudden really bothers me. not to metion I’m experiencing small graphical glitches like flickering armor since the change.

I have a better question…

Why is none of this ever in the patch notes? Anything that has been changed that players will notice (with very, very few exceptions) ought to be in the patch notes. Every time something obviously done intentionally is left out of the patch notes it creates a deluge of false bug reports and gives fuel to the conspiracy theorists who talk about “stealth changes.” The result? Your community loses faith in you and your QA staff has to trudge through a bunch of these reports instead of tracking actual bugs.

I understand why things like foreshadowing for future events, easter eggs, technical behind-the-scenes stuff, or exploit fixes are left out, but those are different. If an animation or model is changed, it should be in the patch notes. If the drop rate of an item is changed, it should be in the patch notes. If a skill is changed, it should be in the patch notes. If a POI or waypoint is added to the game, it should be in the patch notes. Come on, guys.

This case reminds me of the Sylvari cultural armor change. Sudden change to your characters aesthetics without any sort of communication.

With that said I actually prefer the new running animation above the old one provided that my staff didn’t swing like a hay in the wind (much less clip into my t3 sorcerer dress).

The only think I have noticed is that, on my human Mesmer running, the weapons stick out =p I kind of like it lol, and I haven’t checked any of my other human characters.

I must be blind, except for some weapons not clipping anymore I can’t for the life of me see any difference..

I don’t normally play a human, and the one I do have I made recently so I never noticed. My wife mentioned something to me the other day about the running looking odd and she hated it. Figured she was imaging things.

was there a change?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I must be blind, except for some weapons not clipping anymore I can’t for the life of me see any difference..

Can’t see any real difference either.

I don’t get why this moves people that strongly. While I like aesthetics and the overall look of the game world and my own character, I really think it’s a bit ridiculous to complain all about these super small und tiny clipping issues. I always looked at this from a perspective that it’s an RPG: a lot of RPGs have a kittenload of different race/gender/armor combination and that’s why it is extremely hard to create a perfectly fitting result.

What I now see here is that some think the ‘female running’ is different. I watched the pictures and didn’t get it. I also didn’t notice anything in-game. What the hell, guys come down please just enjoy the game. It’s really questionnable that this thread now has two pages (and I even contribute to it :-))

Actually it does matter. You may not notice the way your character moves but many of us do. This is a role-playing game after all.

That may be true, different individuals have different kinds of viewing and hence may notice different things more than others.

And another bug report about this. He certainly does have some serious clipping issues as well with a staff on a female guardian: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Female-running-animation

They really need to tell us whether this is just a bug or intentional (and whether this clipping stuff is going to stay). This is not really about whether you like the animation or not, i want to know if that stuff is permanent. I want to know whether they just mixed stuff up in the animation files (just like the sound bugs where sounds got mixed up as well) or if this is done on purpose.

I think i’ll just create my own bug thread. Maybe they are not really aware that they just caused this with the last patch.

Columbo.5924:

I want to know if that stuff is permanent.

I’d like to know the why part, myself.

And if others have stated, there’s nothing to even notice and everything is fine, then why was it changed? ‘Someone’ noticed something, and somewhere there was a non-publicized outrage at ‘something’ that caused the change? Political or philosophical agenda?

I’d at least like to think, in lieu of an actual bug or mistake, that a change like this wasn’t made ‘for no reason’. That in a meeting, an animator raised their hand and said they were bored, and the response was, “Uhm, go change the human female running animation.”

notebene.3190:

I’d at least like to think, in lieu of an actual bug or mistake, that a change like this wasn’t made ‘for no reason’. That in a meeting, an animator raised their hand and said they were bored, and the response was, “Uhm, go change the human female running animation.”

The more I think of it, the less I think this was done on purpose. I could rather image that they were consolidating animation files and animation mappings and accidently mixed something up. With 14 days cycles of quick-hush-hush living story updates I can really imagine that their already fragile codebase was overburdoned, and some overworked, underpaid worker made a mistake when he was trying to clean up. I just read a confirmed bug report thread where somebody mentioned that all weapon stow sounds were gone. Its the same with the mixed up voices. No offense, but instead of living story updates they really need to get their stuff together.

Ashariel.8490:

By the way, it’s not a “new” animation, it’s actually the male running animation pasted on female characters.

That’s not even possible. This isn’t an MS paint picture, animation cannot be copy/pasted from one completely different model to another.

Conncept.7638:

That’s not even possible. This isn’t an MS paint picture, animation cannot be copy/pasted from one completely different model to another.

It is. Let me explain.

A moving 3d character in a video game consists of 4 types of files. The skeleton, the mesh, the textures and the animations. There is always a different animation file for each animation, such as running, jumping or punching.

The textures are mapped to the meshes, and the meshes are rigged to the skeleton. The skeleton consists of a set of vertices called bones.

An animation file governs the movement of the bones in the skeleton file and, subsequently the meshes that are rigged to it. These textured meshes are the characters that you see running around in game.

As long as the skeletons are the same, or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing) the same animation can run on different skeletons. And different animations can run on the same skeleton, as long that they are addressing bones that the skeleton actually has.

In most games, males and females use the same skeletons for simplicity, but of course different meshes, textures and animations.

I don’t know what caused this bug, but you can certainly mix up animations by mixing up file paths or overwriting files.

- Edited for elaboration.

+1 to change the animation back, it looks odd and unnatural now.

Lucky.9421:

Conncept.7638:

That’s not even possible. This isn’t an MS paint picture, animation cannot be copy/pasted from one completely different model to another.

It is. Let me explain.

A moving 3d character in a video game consists of 4 types of files. The skeleton, the mesh, the textures and the animations. There is always a different animation file for each animation, such as running, jumping or punching.

The textures are mapped to the meshes, and the meshes are rigged to the skeleton. The skeleton consists of a set of vertices called bones.

An animation file governs the movement of the bones in the skeleton file and, subsequently the meshes that are rigged to it. These textured meshes are the characters that you see running around in game.

As long as the skeletons are the same, or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing) the same animation can run on different skeletons. And different animations can run on the same skeleton, as long that they are addressing bones that the skeleton actually has.

In most games, males and females use the same skeletons for simplicity, but of course different meshes, textures and animations.

I don’t know what caused this bug, but you can certainly mix up animations by mixing up file paths or overwriting files.

- Edited for elaboration.

+1 for one of the shortest yet easy understandable explanations of how animation systems work.

Lucky.9421:

Conncept.7638:

That’s not even possible. This isn’t an MS paint picture, animation cannot be copy/pasted from one completely different model to another.

It is. Let me explain.

A moving 3d character in a video game consists of 4 types of files. The skeleton, the mesh, the textures and the animations. There is always a different animation file for each animation, such as running, jumping or punching.

The textures are mapped to the meshes, and the meshes are rigged to the skeleton. The skeleton consists of a set of vertices called bones.

An animation file governs the movement of the bones in the skeleton file and, subsequently the meshes that are rigged to it. These textured meshes are the characters that you see running around in game.

As long as the skeletons are the same, or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing) the same animation can run on different skeletons. And different animations can run on the same skeleton, as long that they are addressing bones that the skeleton actually has.

In most games, males and females use the same skeletons for simplicity, but of course different meshes, textures and animations.

I don’t know what caused this bug, but you can certainly mix up animations by mixing up file paths or overwriting files.

- Edited for elaboration.

Thank-you for taking the time but I’m an animator and I know how it works.

And you can tell just by looking at them that the male and female do not share the same skeleton. But even then it was confirmed by a dev in an armor thread months ago, if I’m not mistaken the number she used was 14, there are fourteen different skeletons across all the races, genders, and a few body types that need their own sets. It’s likely they took one and modified it to the other, because obviously the male and female human skeletons are similar, but that would still be a far-cry from copy pasting.

+1
Please change female human run back to the way it was.

To me, it looks better on heavy armoured characters (although the knee bend angle is still too high), OK on medium, and poor on light.

Regardless, if they changed it on purpose they need to complete the unfinished business and fix 2 handed weapons. Staff now has some ridiculous clipping when walking and that greatsword-around-the-neck bug is annoying as hell (don’t know why but its a real immersion breaker for me).

On a side note: I have to admit (although i rarely do that) that the animation looks good on my female D/D thief.

Columbo.5924:

Regardless, if they changed it on purpose they need to complete the unfinished business and fix 2 handed weapons. Staff now has some ridiculous clipping when walking and that greatsword-around-the-neck bug is annoying as hell (don’t know why but its a real immersion breaker for me).

On a side note: I have to admit (although i rarely do that) that the animation looks good on my female D/D thief.

I’m still in the “original animation” camp. I’m going to file an in game bug report and let the chips fall, as they say.

Heh, I wondered why playing my female characters suddenly became a little less fun to watch while running around.

I miss all of the swinging and strafe swooping and the like.

Conncept.7638:

And you can tell just by looking at them that the male and female do not share the same skeleton.

That’s why I added the caveat “or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing)”

Sometimes two different skeleton files can be different, in that the vertices might have different lengths, but as long as the naming convention of the bones are same then they will still receive motion data from the animation files. So different animations, made with different skeletons, can still be interchangeable.

I base this off my experience as amateur animator back when Oblivion modding was big, and not as a professional. For example, in that game you could play a dog’s animation on your player, with some hilarious and creepy results. This was despite the fact that the dog’s skeleton did not even have all of the same bones as he player, and the ones that it did had completely different proportions. But the names for most of the bones were the same.

I could be wrong about GW2, specifically, but I doubt things are that different across the industry. If, for some reason, they did things very differently and all of the bones between the males and females had different names then the player would likely just float around in a T-pose if the animations were switched. But they could still be switched.

I could confirm this if I ever manage to extract the skeletons and animation files.

I once attempted to extract npc models/anims for GW2 into blender, so I could create some rendered poses for the official gw2wiki… and failed. The community-made extractor that I found did not preserve the file paths. All I found were unrigged meshes.

A lot of companies are really protective of their 3d assets and make them hard to get to. Bethesda is a bit more open, so there is room for amateur modders to work with their stuff.

I did find this though…

Lucky.9421:

Conncept.7638:

And you can tell just by looking at them that the male and female do not share the same skeleton.

That’s why I added the caveat “or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing)”

Sometimes two different skeleton files can be different, in that the vertices might have different lengths, but as long as the naming convention of the bones are same then they will still receive motion data from the animation files. So different animations, made with different skeletons, can still be interchangeable.

I base this off my experience as amateur animator back when Oblivion modding was big, and not as a professional. For example, in that game you could play a dog’s animation on your player, with some hilarious and creepy results. This was despite the fact that the dog’s skeleton did not even have all of the same bones as he player, and the ones that it did had completely different proportions. But the names for most of the bones were the same.

I could be wrong about GW2, specifically, but I doubt things are that different across the industry. If, for some reason, they did things very differently and all of the bones between the males and females had different names then the player would likely just float around in a T-pose if the animations were switched. But they could still be switched.

I could confirm this if I ever manage to extract the skeletons and animation files.

I once attempted to extract npc models/anims for GW2 into blender, so I could create some rendered poses for the official gw2wiki… and failed. The community-made extractor that I found did not preserve the file paths. All I found were unrigged meshes.

A lot of companies are really protective of their 3d assets and make them hard to get to. Bethesda is a bit more open, so there is room for amateur modders to work with their stuff.

I did find this though…

QUAGGAN. Yeah it’s annoying that you don’t have access to their meshes. Could be nice to toy with them a little.

I personally love the new run animation on my ranger as it seems more fitting to her atleast. On the other hand it seems very awkward on my necromancer because shes wearing a skirt. I think it would be nice if we could have both somehow.

Oh and it would be nice if they fix that strange thing with the greatsword. :P

Sirendor.1394:

QUAGGAN. Yeah it’s annoying that you don’t have access to their meshes. Could be nice to toy with them a little.

Oh we do have access to meshes. That nightmarish fish man is a mesh. :S

We just do not have access to skeletons and animations as far as I can tell. I could rig my own skeleton to the meshes(or even use Oblivion’s player skeleton) and make poses out of those, but that is a lot of work for an amateur and would probably cause me a lot of headache. It is normally the kind of work you pay a professional to do. Maybe someday if I get back into it.

The more I think about it, the more I think that animations might not even be in the DAT, but rather are handled server-side so they can not be modified by players. If you could modify animations, I think it could open the door to all kinds of cheating and shenanigans. But I’m no expert so I could be wrong. I can not confirm without a better way to search the DAT.

If someone knows how to extract the DAT while preserving file paths, shoot me a pm.

Lucky.9421:

Sirendor.1394:

QUAGGAN. Yeah it’s annoying that you don’t have access to their meshes. Could be nice to toy with them a little.

We just do not have access to skeletons and animations as far as I can tell. I could rig my own skeleton to the meshes(or even use Oblivion’s player skeleton) and make poses out of those, but that is a lot of work for an amateur and would probably cause me a lot of headache. It is normally the kind of work you pay a professional to do. Maybe someday if I get back into it.

Ah sorry miscomprehended then. I haven’t done rigging + animating myself (more of an amateur on modelling buildings). :P I guess it would be a bit annoying to do that yourself certainly if you wish to make it look near exact to what it used to be in GW2. I don’t know the difficulties involved, so don’t know really. Good luck either way

This is still really bugging me. I really liked how my character “felt”, and had grown accustom to the way it was for over a year. They look really weird now, and it does NOT suit light armor characters AT ALL. I literally don’t even want to play my human characters as much now because I just take notice of it immediately and can’t get past it.

They literally look like they’re running a sprinting marathon in a dress and boots, it’s just plain awkward. Change it back pleeeeeease

Oh?

I actually like this new human female running emote. It looks like they’re putting better effort in it. And less head wobbling.
It shows this… Athletic look.

As for human male running emotes? I wish /that/ was adjusted.

Suddenly this became a problem when people noticed it?

Good luck in getting it changed, in the original guild wars the icons of malaise and wither were incorrectly assigned:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Malaise
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Wither

Notice how wither should represent the withered hand? Coincidentally, shouldn’t malaise represent the sickly human?

They are clearly reversed by accident, and I reported the bug several years ago and they did nothing.

Yea, well, they fixed the bug with 2 handed weapons, but it looks like the new “tough guy running” animation is there to stay. You play a toon for 1 year, you kinda like everything about it and then, out of nowhere, some censored censored gets in and changes things about your toon, which no one ever asked anyone to change. “Stupid kittening book” indeed.

wasted.6817:

Yea, well, they fixed the bug with 2 handed weapons, but it looks like the new “tough guy running” animation is there to stay. You play a toon for 1 year, you kinda like everything about it and then, out of nowhere, some censored censored gets in and changes things about your toon, which no one ever asked anyone to change. “Stupid kittening book” indeed.

Pretty much. It’s really horrible, and irritating a bunch of people because I’ve seen people talking about it in-game ever since it happened. It’s just one of those things you don’t do without at least talking to your player-base about it beforehand. Any developer in previous MMO’s that changed character models or animations didn’t ninja it in like this.

wasted.6817:

Yea, well, they fixed the bug with 2 handed weapons…

They did? I guess my problem is different, with the staff swinging around all over the place behind me.

At any rate, I was told the running change was a bug. So from that, my choices are:

1. I was lied to.

2. I was not lied to, and they are planning on changing it back, they just couldn’t get it in before this patch (though, it seemed to be pretty easy to break in the first place, if true).

3. I was not lied to, and they thought they fixed it, but they didn’t.

Regardless, no mention of it, outside of my source which you aren’t supposed to talk about in fight club. No patch notes. No developer blog notes explaining why.

So why not tell us? I’d like to be an informed consumer that can make a decision about where I’d like to continue to spend my time and money based on the philosophies or values of a company or it’s figure head, and more importantly, whether they feel it appropriate to enforce their own values on me.