Improved ragdolls and kill animations

While I know asking for full blown mo-capped fatalities like we had in Age of Conan is probably out of the question, I still think there could be some improvements to kill animations.

Nowadays, when games use ragdoll, usually there is a short little animation that will play before the actual ragdoll kicks in. So for example, a guy might react to a bullet by flying backwards in a short canned animation and then the ragdoll will kick in. Or maybe he might clutch his midsection and slump to his knees and then the ragdoll will kick in. Etc, etc.

Right now, it seems pretty lame that the characters will simply transition immediately into ragdoll and do a quick face plant regardless of how they die.

But if it’s too much work to create unique kill animations then perhaps just getting some improved ragdolls could make things look a little better. Right now the ragdolls don’t have too many points of articulation and so they look really stiff. Kind of reminds me of how ragdolls were in vanilla Skyrim or old school FPS games like Unreal. No real rotation on arms/legs and so the bodies all slump over in a stiff/rigid fashion. Perhaps adding a few more points of articulation to the bones of the models might help make things look a little better?

Just some suggestions. Coming from AoC where all the combat animations you guys put in were top notch, I was kind of surprised by how tame everything looked in this game by comparison. Take care.

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In fact when a person is shot and killed they go down instantly. All that clutching and so on comes from Hollywood directors that never saw combat. The rag doll the way it is is rather chilling.

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I think the way bodies just fly apart is a bit silly and often seems to bear no relation to how they were actually killed. I miss the old AoC fatalities as well. But at least something more realistic that heads, limbs or even torsos just weirdly popping off is in order.

No one is shot and killed in this game, there are no firearms. Even when firearms are involved, rarely does someone die instantly. In terms of the weapons this game, you’d be lucky if you died instantly. We have personal accounts of Roman soldiers smothering themselves in the mud to end their slow demise from a sword thrust.

I’m with the op on this one, some kind of animation needs to be added to improve humanoid deaths. Even games like mount and blade figured that out, otherwise it does look silly as hell.

I remember having my characters head pop off after falling off a cliff, and landing upright with no hint of head trauma… So yeah I can see where you’re coming from.