Dancer Archive

I saw the new flourishes and nearly /cried all over the Cantina.

What was SOE thinking with this? It's not bad enough that people already consider dancers to be lazy or useless (which I think we prove that we're not), but then these flourishes come along and just make the matter worse.

I'm not a skilled dancer, still in the Entertainer tree. My current highest dance is Footloose, which looks like a wierd Wookie mating dance anyway, but pre-patch it had two flourishes thatI actually liked. Flo 8 and Flo 7. After the patch, it seems that my character kneels, slides across the floor, and then stands back up. Come on! I do 3D animation as a hobby and I can do better than this.

I'm not going to be mad at SOE, but I will say this. I'm horribly disappointed. If this is the best they can do, then there's no telling what lame problems are in store for us later. I'll continue to dance and hope, but that hope is fading pretty fast.

With the new economic alterations, jokingly inadequate Entertainer Missions, and now these flourishes, the dancers are going to end up as a laughing stock. I hope SOE is real happy with what they've done.

Now I'll go take my prozac and lay down.

~Obooma

I agree with what Sultrina said, in general. Don't ask them to take all the new flourishes away. Ask them to fix them. As she and many others have said, the problem seems to be that the new animations are constructed of way too few frames and thus play too quickly and 'jump' from one position to the next rather than flowing smoothly. Do I like them as they are now? No. But I see some real potential in them, if they would polish the animations so they flow smoothly at the correct tempo to match the original flourishes.

As for what others have said about tabling the flourishes in favor of other things . . . I don't agree entirely on that. More flourishes were one of our top five, and I feel they have not lessened any in importance. They are still a needed thing. More than anything, I feel that tabling them now would simply give the impression that we are all happy with the new flourishes as-is, because they will be looking mostly at the fact that the Correspondent list went from counting new flourishes as important to not having it as an issue anymore. They don't seem to really follow all our posts all that much -- the whole idea of the Correspondents is to make it so they can get our input without wading through the tons of posts. So please do not drop the issue of new flourishes completely. Let them know that we appreciate that they are making an effort, but that it has fallen far short in implementation and needs some further work.


P.S. Jennith -- Best of luck and more power to you! I'd LOVE to see more motion-captured moves, especially ballet! (The Russian-style dancing you mentioned would be cool too, and awesome for the guys.)

Go back to your tank fish girl

To answer the original question, I would rather see the new flourishes removed until they can reanimate them properly. I am very disappointed. I logged on last night very excited to try them out, especially as I am still a young dancer, and rhythmic2 was my main dance (just hit Dance 3 last night. Wow. Footloose was kinda disappointing). I tried the new flourishes and felt like puppet on tangled strings. I can dance better than that in real life, and I am *not* a dancer.

I'm 100% certain the new flourishes are NOT what they intended. In other words...they're bugged.

to answer ravenmist, i wouldn't remove them.

but i think we need to tell the devsa couplethings here:

1. the tempo of these new ones seems to be too fast, possible bug.

2. we appreciate the effort that went into giving us these new flourishes, but because our profession depends SOOO much on appearances, we *NEED* mocap quality flourishes. we are spoiled rotten, and will accept nothing less

3. we understand that they may not have the time or resources at the moment to give us more mocap flourishes, so we are willing to be patient and hold out for a windfall of good mocaps in the future. in the meantime, they can address some other issues that might be easier to implement from a time/resource standpoint.

That would be great to have a real life dancer and player to help with new moves. Good luck!

-Layla-

Future Chorographer, Valcyn

as an addendum.. i think we need to stress that new flourishes are VERY high priority, but if they are unable to give us mocaps, we'd rather have them work on something else until they can

I like the new flourishes overall, though they do need to be smoothed out, like everyone says. It adds variety to the dances. I get tired of watching the same old moves all the time.

As far as having transitional flourishes, that sounds way too complicated. I usually stick to the dance I get the most XP from anyway.

Thanks for the job well done. Ravenmist

-Layla-

Future chorographer, Valcyn

I was actually having fun with the new poplock flo's today,

And so was my audience. I would /welcome someone and then do the robotic move with the hand wave. Everyone was amused. hehe. And it was something different.

If only my power would come on so I could get off my ibook and back onb my PC so I could play. Withdrawls! eep

Ravenmist,

I think the biggest issue that most of the dancers and patrons i have shown the new flo's to.

1) Its not the dance "step" thats the problem. In Rhythmic for instance i realize the moves are supposed to be more like "Modern" dance. The problem in fact though is that the "Rhythm" is lost. The physics are wrong with movement along the ground as someone pointed out, the feet kinda slide, secondly the arm movements are too jerky they look forced.

2)The new flo's in Formal wouldnt be bad if the torso movements indicated the momentum that caused them. As i stated above the move looks forced not fluid.

If we could get motion caputure on the "Exact" same dance steps i think we would all be happy about it. Its not the steps themselves, but the fact that they look forced. Dancers are graceful. These look like someone who doesnt know how to dance attempting master "type" dance moves. The effect gets lost.

I think especially in poplock the biggest problem is that the dance moves are being executed much to quickly and hence look like a puppet, and also that the legs of the avatar move in an unnatural way along the floor.

Alot of us have feelings like this on Footloose dance, but even if you really study the "footloose" dance that we have if you look at the avatar's movements even though its kinda spastic, the avatar moves like a real person would doing the moves.

We need to get rid of the "Spaz" and "Marionette" look to the dance steps, not the dance steps themselves.

Syl

That would be great to have a real life dancer and player to help with new moves. Good luck!

All of the in-game character movements are motion-captured. That's why I'm certain the current new flourishes are bugged and not as intended.

1. Yes. I would get rid of the new flourishes all together and go back to having none (since the old flourishes were just reused place holders).

2. I've seen nothing in the new flourishes that I would save. They were badly done.


Now, I do want to take some umbrage here--people saying these are bad because they are 'animated' rather than 'motion captured'. I am a professional animator and I can tell you that if I was doing the animation for these, they would LOOK RIGHT. I was a dancer for 15 years (performing on statge regularly) before an injury took me out of that profession. Whenever a dance scene would come up in any project I was on, it would always go to me because I could animate it right.

It's not a matter of animation vs motion capture, it's just BAD ANIMATION! Please stop blaming it on simply being animated! If they had a good animator doing these flourishes, they'd look great. As it is, whomever did these flourishes not only lacks anatomical sense but timing and a sense of proper weight and kinetic quality.