My druid being able to magically transform as much as he wants as long as ladders are involved is more immersion breaking. Having a bear climb a ladder is literally the elegant solution. I'd even prefer the animals just jumping the distance than seeing my druid constantly transform to climb ladders, like in Godhand.
https://twitter.com/lacquerleaks/status/1003411446607241216You are WRONG. Taking huge liberties with physics as opposed to being flexible with a specific D&D rules that Larian is already being flexible with is OBJECTIVELY the bigger of two evils. Having a super-sized wolf or bull climb a spindly ladder is OBJECTIVELY more immersion breaking than a counter not ticking down while climbing ladders for quality of life purposes. Mentioning a (two-ton super sized polar-) bear climbing a spindly ladder as "literally the elegant solution" is misrepresenting the issue. This is a quality of life implementation that is as strong as its weakest link. A fact you're keen to disregard.
Having animals "just jumping the distance" is a solution I've considered, but it too comes with issues: Some ladders are really tall/long, if beasts are suddenly capable of jumping 2-3 times as far as they normally would be able to just because there's a ladder, then how is this any less immersion breaking than a counter not ticking down? Then again breaking physics kind of is your forte lol. If all beasts are given vast jumping abilities in general to make this logically consistent, then the use of specific beasts like the bird may become superfluous. When all shapes have similar abilities, each lacks in flavor or one becomes clearly better than others.
I can't tell if you didn't read what I said or are just misrepresenting it, but I'm literally talking about the ladder climbing animations. That's what you brought up as being a waste of resources, and that's what I'm talking about. Obviously I'm not saying the entire druid implementation took hours, I'm saying the climbing animations took that long. Further, time spent on animations doesn't mean less time spent on class implementations or bug fixes, I'm going to guess the animators primarily animate.
If you can't be bothered to read my replies and respond in good faith just leave them alone, thank you.
Stop projecting. I clearly stated I was talking about the specific issue of wild shaped beasts climbing ladders. You not only stated that these animations could be done in a matter of hours, you claimed it could be done in MINUTES. You even objected to my very mentioning of this as a finite resource that is mismanaged in my opinion. If a thing could be done in minutes or hours, it could be done on an impulse while Swen was polishing and putting on his armor. This is not a bad faith misrepresentation as you claim, this is your understanding of reality, your logic, put in context to depict how in fact YOU are the one who consistently misrepresent. Misrepresent the amount of resources this in reality requires and misrepresent me. I gave additional context with EA just adding a single class in over 5 months while several subclasses still being either not implemented or broken to give you a sense of much-needed realism.
Animators primarily work on animation yes and there are potential bottlenecks that may or may not lead to developers of any stripe at various points being free to perceivably "waste resources". This is seemingly a valid point, but a large conjecture based on the assumption these animations are a trifle thing and that animators conceivably suddenly run out of work/areas to improve. For instance, Larian stated they hoped to add more wild shape beasts down the line, in reality this means the ladder animations has already been prioritized above adding more beasts. They are prioritized over adding additional monsters too. They are prioritized over stuff that would benefit the many as opposed to benefitting the few...players of a niche class that also aren't worried about immersion breaking physics. Combat animations for dodge and block for instance, or for reactiveness to being flanked are features that has been repeatedly requested (unlike bulls climbing ladders I might add), that would bring more variety and immersion to combat while also address with how missing instills less of a sense of RNG imposed failure that many have been vocal on as lowering their enjoyment of the game.
Resources aren't infinite and one implementation realistically comes at a cost of another in a game that has an extreme amount of material to draw from.
