[Sharum]

I've gathered up some questions from both the EU and US boards and combined them all into this post of answers.

Originally Posted by Valrun Are you saying that someone made "roughly 800 to 1000" female animations longer than the male equivalents?

Every fighting animation in the game are originally MOCAP'd and not hand-animated, so yes, there are differences in length.

Originally Posted by Sennacherib Will only female combo damage be affected, or will this result in different damage output for everyone, male and female?

Almost every combo-finisher will have its length adjusted during this process. In most cases the female ones will be made shorter, but in some cases (if we are unable to make the female version short enough without impacting the visual quality) the male counterpart will be lengthened. Once the animation-length has been finalized every combo will then be re-balanced based on this new value.

Originally Posted by freakinsyco Hmm I dont like the sound of the announcement post. Why not just make females use the male animations in the short term? Gets everyone happy now, and everyone more happy later when you add their own custom animations.

Because re-targetting the male animations to work on the Female rig (a 'rig' is your characters skeleton more or less) with all the necessary tweaks would take almost as much work.

Originally Posted by Fenwrig It does look like it's a long process, and I for one am willing to wait now that they've acknowledged the problem......assuming their timeframe is reasonably upheld

It's looking very good right now, but I'll get back to that later when I know for sure if we can deliver ahead of schedule or not.

Originally Posted by ThiagoDoherty I have a male and female characters. The female is a ranger and it seems that she is a tad slower than my male conqueror when triggering combos and the like. I thought it was because of the differences in classes and combo animations. I do think that female archetypes could be different than male ones, but maybe increasing some basic stat like dexterity or strength could alter the outcome of the damage issue.

The discrepancy in animation length will only have an impact when comparing two characters of different gender but with the same class. What you're describing is, like you're guessing, the difference between the two classes in question.

Originally Posted by ender333 Why they won't patch the white damage fix if its ready now makes no sense either.

The normalization to 'white' damage should already have been patched Live over the past few weeks. If there's still a difference there it's likely that some data has been over-written (this shouldn't happen, but that's not saying it can't happen) and we'll have to correct it by including the correct data again in an upcoming patch.

Originally Posted by Alitia I really don't understand why do you working on all the class animations. your priority should be: Soldiers and rogues. HOX and Bear shaman. no need to adjust weapon speed and combo speed on POM/TOS/Demo/Necro.

What we're adjusting is the length of the combo-finishers (the animation that plays after you correctly execute all steps in a combo-chain). As the above-mentioned caster-classes don't have combos, there's no work for us to do on those in this context.

[BigBadB]

Originally Posted by Eldbare This is bad news. Haven't met a tank yet capable of keeping aggro when i'm going bananas. This means it's not getting any better. HELLO MORE DEATHS WAHOO

Erm, has it occurred to you that managing your aggro is just as much your responsibility as the tank's?

[-GhostWalker-]

http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/show...678#post625678

And I'm happy. But I do agree that up t o a month is a long time. But as long as my female DT teams up with other players she will be fine.

Thanx for letting us know more about this.

[BigBadB]

Thanks for the update, Sharum - much appreciated.

Of course, it doesn't actually answer the question that I find most interesting - which is how this situation arose in the first place and got all the way through beta without it being noticed (or, if it was noticed, why it wasn't fixed before launch).

[Daffyd]

How was this not picked up before design started? How were your animation designers not told the length of time they had for each animation before creating them? Jesus, this is a fundamental mistake that would get you a failing mark on an undergrad degree project let alone a real world assignment!

[norcus]

Does this mean that all combo animations will have the exact same duration?

[Sunstrider]

So, during the years of development and testing, no one figured that this would be a problem?

This is a pretty big issue to go unnoticed.

[BigBadB]

Originally Posted by norcus Does this mean that all combo animations will have the exact same duration?

No, unless I've misunderstood, it means that each specific combo animation will have the same duration for both male and female characters. Different combos will still have different animations, which may have different durations.

[DukeP]

Lovely, nice and fullfilling.

Thanks.

I guess the reason why this error appeared, is a fact that is going to be discussed in great depth in animation and programming classes over the world, the next couple og years.

~~DukeP~~

[Sabraka]

I am sure most people (who aren't trolls) will be very grateful for the information you have provided in the time frame that you promised.

It is a good insight as to what you have to do in order to re balance.

At least you guys will maybe get some overtime in ;P

Thanks for the info.