Stop demanding weaksauce animations, this is a good case of : peopl edont know what they want.
This realism circlejerk will only make the game look worse. and no ammount of realism will save that.
Look at kingdom come, or hell, skyrim. Westen games have for too long clung to a false sense of realism when it coems to meele attack animations.
But when you strike something, it doesnt FEEL like it looks.
it feels impactufll. and thats why in a game the animations should adher to the FEELING of striking something yourself, rather than how it looks when recorded on a camera.
the wording of your post aggrevates me eve more. I dont want any of that wizard wank. Magic should be impactfull and cool but yeah no, muggles dont get to feel powerfull.
Absoluteley not.
So no, i disagree. Fundamentally.
the animations are fine like the are. In fact. They should probably add even more screenshake and hitstop.
Make combat feel satisfying
If you want to see realism in western games that makes melee more impressive than the magic in the same game, look at Dragon Age Origins. Sure a Mage could cast Firestorm or whatever it was called, but besides that the magic effects were overall not as impressivelooking as the animations of the Melee abilities. And the melee execution animations were absolutely epic and cinematic. Like crawling up an Ogre to impale it while it tumbles over. Just because something looks realistic, doesn't mean that it isn't every bit as epic to watch as a magic effect can be. It's just a different sort of epic feel. You could also look at the melee animations of Shogun Total War 2, eventhough that's not an RPG of course.
And the non-Wizards can also have magic abilities and magic effects. In 5E there is a magic-oriented subclass of each class. You can have a Fighter or a Barbarian that uses magic if you want. And if you choose a purly physical damage oriented class, there will still be magic weapons like a flaming or talking sword, and magic items and artefacts, aswell as other magical/mystical/psionic abilities like certain racial abilities, certain divine or magical gifts, and certain class abilities.
That's not what I'm suggesting against.
What I'm saying is a normal ability like a normal weapon attack with a normal Longsword for example, or the very ordinary thing of dashing/sprinting foward, shouldn't look like magic, because that will make the feel of that magic weapon that you found, feel that much less special. Like there will be a nearly unnoticeable difference in feel if both feel magical. If everything looks and feels like a similar thing, then the feel of the differences and the atmosphere of it, will be trivialised.
And you can still feel equally as epic with an ordinary Longsword with zero magical particle effects happening while you swing your sword in different combos, and have different "fatality"-like moments, as a Wizard can have by casting a Fireball. It's just a very different feel to the epicness, which creates a diverse amounts of ways to feel being awesome.
Anyways, you seem to prefer when games become Manga-like or Anime-like, whereas I prefer when things become western-like. I imagine you probably prefer the animations of Dragon Age Inquisition over Dragon Age Origins. And that's fine, we're fundamentally different in what we find awesome then.
As for realism and immersion, first of : we're in a fantasy world with magic, differents races, planes of existences, dragons, magical beast and so on. You also have to take into account that an adventurer is not just a normal human being.
If you want to feel like your character is a normal joe, well, he should have 10 in all his stats, which is the commoner stats block.
When a character with 18 strenght is breaking a door, it should NOT look normal, IMO. It should look impressive and inhuman because that's what 18 str is.
In a perfect world where they would have infinite time to make everything, I would agree that it would be cool if you could see a wizard using his material component when casting spells and everything like that. But, I mean, you realise how much work that is ?
It would already be amazing if all the spells in the books makes it into the games. We can't ask for too much.
18 is the genius level of Human capacity. 19 and above is the levels beyond human natural capability, which is why Elves can start with Dexterity 19. Or that's atleast how it was in AD&D. So a fighter with 18 Strength would still be at the human level of strength. He would be at the level of strength of someone like Arnold Swartzenegger in his prime. Sure he can break down a door in a super impressive way, but there wouldn't be magical particle effects and beams of Light happening around him while he did it. And that's also how it is in Dungeons and Dragons Pen and Paper. Just because you are extremely strong at 18 Strength, doesn't mean that when you lift something heavy that some heavenly Halluja sound effect with Light beams happen. Not unless there is a supernatural reason for such effect to happen, like such as a divinely bestowed favor, gift or blessing, or a racial Ability or an actual magical ability, or something from a magic item.
But it's still very impressive-looking of someone to break down a door with relative ease, particle effects or not!
And I completely agree that it would be amazing to see material components animated in while casting spells. And I really do hope that they do this with those spells that they have said will have material component requirements.
I don't think it's too much to be asking for a simple scroll-reading animation to be added to the game when it's already been done in Neverwinter Nights. But it's not a gamebreaker of course. But I'm still suggesting it because now is the time to give suggestions in order to help the devs make the game as good as it can get.
