Nightborne: The Fixes We Need

Community General Discussion
122

Why? We’re all paying customers (on the real life side) and we come to the Warcraft Universe for our own personal reasons. I don’t see any unreasonable entitlement or narcissism in the post you referenced.

This post is from 01Feb2018. I understand that some changes have been made, yet others have not. Some of the complaints from 9 months ago are still very relevant.

I realize that WoW has had issues. I remember when the Orcs went through Shouldergate, Undead had wonky shield placement, and a host of other sketchy things. The game is huge, the variety of systems it functions on is vast - together this is a monumental accomplishment on Blizzard’s part.

I’m thankful for what I have - for when flying mounts just glide, or do whatever their secondary flying animation is rather than just flapping endlessly as you fly from point A to point B.

I’m thankful for the memes that Blizzard has embraced (X WAS MERELY A SETBACK!), and a nearly endless list of other minor details that have made the World of Warcraft that much more enjoyable.

Animations and art have been a major part of the WoW package. I recall the start of more “casual” raiding in Wrath was due (in part) to how few people got to see some of the game’s best artwork in BT/Hyjal. I know that artwork well - I was there. I believe that Ulduar and ICC were also spectacular, and I’m glad more people got to experience it.

Art is something Blizzard typically does well. I was burned out after WoD and, combined with some personal reasons, skipped Legion. Leveling through it, I’m somewhat sad I missed it. So far I’ve only been to the Paladin and Demon Hunter class halls and they’re both absolutely epic. The story has been epic.

This thread, and many like it, point to something that is historically Un-Blizzard. A problem with the Nightborne is that their art and animation anomalies do impact “quality of life” in game.

My experience is only with Female so far, and my observations are as follows:

Idle animations are busted. Jumping has no flare - which is fine, but the transition from landing to running is about as graceful as a dumpster rolling down a flight of stairs. Shoulder alignment and scale is hot garbage.

Going back to BT/Hyjal - T6 is among my favorite Priest sets and what I’d intended to go for first. The shoulders look awful. My next option was the set from Ulduar - again the shoulders are pretty bad. Third option was Dragon soul - again, shoulders.

Tier 4, ICC and the Class Hall sets don’t look too bad though. I might also investigate some of the recolors from other classes, although they tend to be decidedly non-Priest.

People are allowed to be unhappy with pretty major things like unpolished animations and art work. What we worked for isn’t exactly what we got.

I’m hopeful though, I’ve historically HATED Troll related art work. I did the quest line to open up Dazar’alor and the whole thing looked incredible to me. The cut scene was outstanding - which Blizzard is pretty well known for - and Dazar’alor is absolutely gorgeous.

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123

It’s a carry over from GIGANTIC SHOULDERS for Night Elves

Nightborne were hastily done. There should be more than just 3 skin tones. There should be more hairstyles and faces as well. They should also flippy jump.

You can sit on my Hippogryph and we’ll go back in time, I’ll tell them you’re with me :smiley:

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124

Only if you want a capital city, competent leaders and a faction that wins.

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125

The Female is a mannequin. It doesn’t move. How does that garbage get released as a toon?

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126

I’ve noticed they can’t turn their heads to the left, only to the right, it’s really weird. But blizzard rushed them out and doesn’t think the small stuff is worth fixing, unless it’s something unnoticeable like the lips on a belf.

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127

The one thing I wish they would change about NB is the heritage armor. I wish the top wasn’t a dress. I wish the top was as the top looks, but w/o the skirt part. And the pants could be the skirt…so I could add another bikini top to my collection.

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128

Very well written post!

I agree with all of these points. While I think that a race shouldn’t have ALL available hairstyles in-game available to it, I think that some Dwarf, Night Elf, Blood Elf, and Draenei hairstyles would go very well with the Nightborne.

In addition, I desperately want to get my hands on the Nightborne weapons–especially the shield and the warglaives.

And lastly, I want us to be able to acquire the other armor sets which Nightborne NPCs around Suramar wear, too. They are beautiful and it’s a shame that we can’t use it.

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131

Although my last was gushing with my over-all love for the game, I should probably re-center myself with a bit of hard truth. I rolled a new Hunter recently - a class I have no time on since either Wrath or Cata. I queued for LFG and got Inner Mara. As we jumped off the falls, my pet went… somewhere.

Considering how wonky Hunters can be at times, several of my main abilities are built into a macro which switches my target to the focus target (the Tank is focus) and issues a pet attack command. In essence, my pet is always attacking what the tank has targeted.

Anyway, we clear the first couple of Hydras and are about to head inside. We’re about 19 miles from where we jumped off the falls, and I’m wondering why my pet hasn’t teleported to me. The tank is the type of fundamentally sound tank who turned everything at least 90 degrees to the group, and happened to be facing away from the entrance. I turned to look at what he was looking at, and I found that my pet had finally found a route to where we were… and had half the instance in tow.

I made a remark about how I thought they’d fixed pet path finding - and frankly I recall leveling my last hunter through that same instance, jumping off the same falls, and having it teleport to me nearly the instant we landed. But whatever.

One of my fellow nameless faceless LFG members wisely stated: “If it isn’t game breaking, Blizzard isn’t going to fix it.”

Wise, and unfortunately quite true words. I got into some LFG last night with my boosted Nightborne Priest and quickly discovered a hard truth: When you’re busy, you don’t care about all of these fairly insignificant things.

Were my spells casting? Yup. Did everything work correctly? Yup. Was I jumping a lot like I always do? Yup. Did I notice the clunky landings? Nope. In fact I didn’t notice any of the problems I’d mentioned - I was busy.

Are they still problems? Yeah, they are. Would I notice if I was out questing? Yeah, I would. People get different things out of this game. Some people NEED that aesthetic polish that Blizzard has historically done well - especially if there is going to be a solid Transmog system in place. I get it, you can’t please everyone.

Oh and uh, some of us are STILL waiting for Blizzard to fix issues with female Undead getting stuck on things like stairs. I know there was a MASSIVE quality of life improvement in either BC or Wrath, but my Warrior still gets hung up on stairs all the time.

Which is part of why I jump all the time and notice the animation issues with the Nightborne. Just saying.

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132

well that’s fixed on the ptr, nightborne shoulders are now way to small. i thought the size was fine before

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I just went on PTR to check some things. I did not see a significant difference in shoulders for cloth armor on female Nightborne as of 10 minutes ago.

I took screen shots of a couple of sets from the Dressing Room and, with the power of Photoshop, put PTR over live. One was tinted red, the other tinted blue. The results were inconclusive, but leaning heavily towards no obvious change. Due to differences in animation frames, there MIGHT be a difference, but it certainly isn’t obvious.

Using the T6 set, I zoomed in on the arm and did the same to check for alignment with landmarks on the chest piece I was wearing. With the arms adjusted to match, there is again no OBVIOUS sign of a change.

I’m tired, my tests aren’t pixel perfect, but I’m reasonably sure female shoulders are untouched based on the PTR this morning.

One thing that I did notice is that the idle animations are seriously cleaned up. The PTR SEEMS significantly more fluid. On live the female idle animation has a fairly stiff look to the left that snaps back to neutral fairly abruptly. This animation can run back to back which makes the character look like she’s having some sort of seizure.

On PTR there is a very fluid left to right sweep that returns nicely to center. One step at a time. You can still dock the QE2 under my shoulders, but at least I won’t look like a busted robot when I’m AFK. Busted robot… or perhaps fiending for some of that GOOD ancient mana. snort snort

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134

I think only the males had their shoulder size adjusted, and that was a few PTR builds ago.

I checked the female idle animations on the PTR and I think they’re pretty good. I don’t know if they improved upon them or just reverted them back the way they were but they look pretty nice.

135

If you want proper Night Elf proportions, the Alliance is waiting for you.

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136

Spot.on post

I spent so much time trying to unlock the ugly elves

The elves that were gaunt and hallow looking. Not beautiful like nelves

Then it’s an exact reskin of night elves with less options

Entirely don’t care anymore and feel like I got played by blizzard tbh

Farmed the 3 damn achievements for 2 and a half months

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137

The issue is that they tried to make them look as “Night Elf” as possible to minimize the amount of effort needed to work on their aesthetics (like outfits).

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138

Reading this has convinced me the nightborne really suck.

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139

If I’m being completely honest, they really don’t.

There are some Quality of Life issues which make the experience a little clunky, but they’re a welcome dose of variety IMO. The story leading up to the unlock was pretty good as well.

Although if I’m being honest, there were times when I felt like I was feeding a bunch of junkies who had a lot to say about the great things they could do, but couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch.

Oculeth was cool out of the gate. Valtrois was pretty well written IMO. She rubbed me wrong right out of the gate, but definitely grew on me as time went on. I’m not sold on Thalyssra. Perhaps I missed some of the story line, but a “leader” needs to do more than say “Something needs to be done!” and wait for one of her subordinates to come up with a solution.

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140

Yeah, nightborne are pretty cool. Just because the playable model and racials have some problems doesn’t mean the race sucks.

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141

The proportions of the male models are abnoxious compared to the NPCs. They look like night elves in the late stages of a terminal illness. I refuse to play as one of them.

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Im here again to show my support for this, I hope we get noticed by blizzard and the model is giving the fixes that It needs.

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All of the Nightborne NPCs are awesome minus Thalyssra but they could have just written her better. Only the playable model is what ruins the experience. Also I don’t understand why the NPCs have a different accent than the playable character.

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