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Too much animation everywhere


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Hello!

I think this topic has been coming for a pretty long time and finally reached the point when even my laziness can't prevent me from writing it. During the last few years amount of pointless animation has been greatly increased for literally no reason. I believe it started with characters making poses during changing clothes which was both bearable and explainable, however, most of recent animations have no purpose at all other than being annoyance throughout the game. Most of those annoyances force me and, as I believe, many other users to purposefully avoid screens and popups with too much animation that just plays non-stop over and over again. Here's the evergrowing list:

  • main screen animation, usually update/event related. Usually includes characters doing various motion like moving a bit, lifting things like carrot and such. Since you don't stay at main screen for too long, that wouldn't be much of an issue if the size of that animation wasn't like 2/5 of the screen. I usually skip that screen straight to server list just so I don't have to bear the look of that huge animation driving me insane.
  • Item collection screen includes all characters taking like half of the screen constantly doing something, like scratching butts, waving, hugging plushies and some other weird stuff I definitely don't want to be seeing each time I visit that screen. Why are they here? Are there really people who want to see all characters at once all doing some pointless activity. i don't think so and probably nobody does.
  • reworked/new characters idle animation e.g. Warly constantly smelling non-existing smell, Wigfrid bowing whenever possible and so on. It makes you feel these characters have some psychotic disease that makes them unable to stand still longer than few seconds. In most games idle animation turns on after you stood still for very long and even then it's very subtle. DST's recent idle animations are quickly invoked and spreadout, which means if you have to idle at least several seconds, you are better off to as minimize the game as well.
  • recent invention - characters' facial animation in tab menu and on character selection screen. Honestly, that beats both previous points in terms of annoyance. Why would you want to be exposed to be seeing characters' facial animation every time you go to players list? It's incredibly creepy and annoying. And you can't skip or disable it.

I don't like the direction of having every single static image in the game eventually being replaced by an animated one. Animation is good, but it should have a purpose, otherwise it'll just spam the brain with useless information. DST increasingly gets the feel of some chinese game where everything constantly blinks, flashes, pops out of nowhere, moves back and forth and so on. Please stop it, that's too much animation already.

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It's interesting to me how much you are disgusted by simple things like animations on wardrobe and main menu screens and expect other people to have the same reaction. Those are all simple touches put in place to grant more life into the game. I honestly love most of the animations (I can live without the living disembodied heads of the survivors in the character select screen but that's just one animation I'm not too positive about). The main menu screens always hype me up, such as Winona holding a carrat, Wilson & Willow walking away from Klaus, Wolfgang hugging a giant wallnut etc, I wouldn't want them returning to static images.

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I think expectation of same feeling from other people is from other thread - about art quality. But this is slightly different thing.

I dont mind most of things, even I like love big beautiful animated main screen and I am that type of people who likes to click everything what animated, like a kid, and I was lucky to find easter eegs and minigames without wiki. The only moment when I start telling stop will be when menu text start jumping, bottom pictures dancing and animate that brown background behind everything. 

Still kind of understand you. Effort from animated floating heads could be put into more important parts of game.

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To be honest, I don't see any problems with animations. Except for the last point. And then there is a problem due to the fact that the animations of the characters ' heads are poorly aligned in the center of the icon itself.
As it is, I believe that all animations should be present, especially in the main menu, where there is this wonderful big animation.

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Are you intentionally out of your way to stare at animations so you can get pissed off at animations? Don't idle on the main menu. Don't idle on the item collection screen. Don't idle when you're playing the game. Don't idle on the character select screen (Although that one does look pretty bad). Problem solved.

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Ok on the in-game character idle animations, makes characters feel more alive. Same for full-body characters in game's menus. Yet the in-game and menus "floating blinking heads" are quite weird, distracting in a detrimental way, making them seem to be "living heads in jars" wobbling up-'n'-down - the static images were better from this pov. And yes, the general feeling is DST becomes a "stuff moving everywhere, shining, jumping, etc" bonanza a bit by now.

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On 2/5/2021 at 2:18 PM, shadowDigga said:

Item collection screen includes all characters taking like half of the screen constantly doing something, like scratching butts, waving, hugging plushies and some other weird stuff I definitely don't want to be seeing each time I visit that screen. Why are they here? Are there really people who want to see all characters at once all doing some pointless activity. i don't think so and probably nobody does.

They show your equipped skins and you can click them to instantly equip skins for them? I think this is useful 

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Yeah it's overwhelming when you look at it as a whole, the character movements are annoying, and the main menu animations (the small boxes) are disappointing, here is why: Before there were these animation/information boxes, we had a big Gif of DST related to current state of it, so when you launched the game, it was like opening a comic book, now? it's like you are opening an office computer.

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It's a bit busy. Not a big deal, but I wouldn't design menus like it myself.
 
The only thing I'd really agree on that calls for change is regarding the rework animation's frequency, because it is in-game. They really play at every microsecond they can. Imp dance and such being a real distraction. Again not a big deal on surface, it just clutters the mind something, constantly bombarded by information

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On 2/6/2021 at 2:18 AM, shadowDigga said:

DST increasingly gets the feel of some chinese game where everything constantly blinks, flashes, pops out of nowhere, moves back and forth and so on.

since when having an animation for the UI = chinese game?

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8 hours ago, Cosheeta said:

It's a bit busy. Not a big deal, but I wouldn't design menus like it myself.
 
The only thing I'd really agree on that calls for change is regarding the rework animation's frequency, because it is in-game. They really play at every microsecond they can. Imp dance and such being a real distraction. Again not a big deal on surface, it just clutters the mind something, constantly bombarded by information

There is something I dont really understand about idle animations being distracting. Really, I do wish to understand.

The only time you would stand completely idle not doing anything is to recover Sanity through the Sisturn, long winter nights or waiting for Ruins. If you are staring at the middle of your screen waiting for something, regardless of how often these animations are, what are they distracting you from? Distracting you from keeping your mind blank while staring at a screen where nothing happens?

Every single other case where your character would be idle, you would be doing something; placing a structure, organising your inventory or looking at crafting menus. In which case, your eyes are focused on a different part of the screen entirely. No matter if your character starts dancing on top of a table, your eyes and mind are on that task.

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I am actually quite perplexed by how many people say "It's just little unnecessary cute animations!" Why is it that so many people don't know what overstimulation is... I tried to get my wife into Don't Starve and THIS is the exact reason she didn't even want to start playing. It is all just so exhausting. A simple "Less effects" option would quite simply make the accessibility of the game quite a bit higher!

I am also distressed by the overabundance of little bedazzlement but somehow I can endure it because I know the game already and I adore it.

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I really like the animations. I like how the idle animations show little chunks of the character's personality and they don't happen so often where I find it distracting. And I'm always happy to see the main screen animation for whatever update is added. I've never heard anyone have an issue with them until now. I suppose some of them can be a bit of a sensory overload and maybe there could be an option to toggle them to a still image, but removing them?

The only issue I've ever had with the animations is in the cosmetics screen where it repeats the same one every time you change items. I find that one a bit annoying, but that's all.

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On 2/7/2021 at 9:07 AM, Maybe a dog said:

There is something I dont really understand about idle animations being distracting. Really, I do wish to understand.

The only time you would stand completely idle not doing anything is to recover Sanity through the Sisturn, long winter nights or waiting for Ruins. If you are staring at the middle of your screen waiting for something, regardless of how often these animations are, what are they distracting you from? Distracting you from keeping your mind blank while staring at a screen where nothing happens?

Every single other case where your character would be idle, you would be doing something; placing a structure, organising your inventory or looking at crafting menus. In which case, your eyes are focused on a different part of the screen entirely. No matter if your character starts dancing on top of a table, your eyes and mind are on that task.

Hahah, alright. Well. I completely disagree that you'd only stand still during something like that, preposterous. Any case, they are literal kinematic clutter, for one it's distracting from a peace of mind, don't pretend you don't understand what that is. Two, dst is not even close to a blank screen game, that's just dishonest, you'd know full well anything in dst will appear from nowhere to ruin your day whenever it wants, clutter like this keeps visual input muddled, and it's a demanding game that asks of you to keep eyes on the screen to an unnatural amount for a sandbox. And before you assume we read all visual input like some arbitrary continuous canvas, no, humans process movement as separate from other input. It's literally poking a different brain nerve. If we can understand complaints about annoyances from blinking lights or stark contrasting hues we can be as annoyed by a screen congested by movements, both are inputs like being prodded in the ribs and arms at the same time, like smelling something foul and hearing noises. Nothing mutually exclusive.
 
Always keep a move on? A frantic way to play, no thanks. And what a poor taste nonchalantly dismissed discourse. "Just focus". "You should this or that". Maybe you can somehow limit your peripheral vision or attention span on demand, but I see flaws in arguing to ignore taxing inputs when the whole screen demands you process it's input. And if the intended design is for the user's responsibility to never cease output to alleviate unprompted feedback then you've made an ruthlessly demanding and exhausting product that I'd argue it is doing no favours for the core design it claims to strive for.
 
Which is to say, "uncompromising" or not, I don't think their vision - or anyone's vision - of uncompromising survival was to overwhelm the player with information and go "have fun distinguishing it".
 
Now if you want the dance to reach full conclusion then we can tango about how much visual clutter is actually too much but we'd be at a subjective dance stage and as such we know the ending of it already. As my personal encore already stated; it's a bit too much.

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1 hour ago, Cosheeta said:

Which is to say, "uncompromising" or not, I don't think their vision - or anyone's vision - of uncompromising survival was to overwhelm the player with information and go "have fun distinguishing it".

I'm not on either side of this argument, but I'm not quite following why you brought up the uncompromising thing. Was anyone arguing that that was the reason there should be lots of animations?

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