Yah I noticed this immediately after I started playing again. Attack animations are smooth until you hit anything (rocks, mobs, trees) with any weapon and then the animation completely stops for maybe 1/4-1/2 a second. Your character literally becomes completely frozen mid animation. It has the appearance of a stutter / frame skip.

I played for ~150 hours and don't recall this happening previously around Feb / March when the game launched. If it was always like this, I have no idea how I didn't notice until now. I do really hope this is a bug and not some undocumented change or design decision because it looks really bad. I'm surprised there aren't more people talking about this. Maybe because with camera shake being on by default it largely masks the problem. I personally can't stand the obnoxiously strong camera shake so this animation problem is very apparent.

I made a clip showcasing the problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWEye3jN69I

Good point on the camera shake masking the issue. I instantly turned that off whne i started playing so maybe its not well talked about as most people leave that on. Hoping the devs see this and at least polish the animation effect when hitting things.

I think it's a intended type of visual feedback when hitting something. To simulate resistance or something.

Originally posted by TiredTyrant:

I think it's a intended type of visual feedback when hitting something. To simulate resistance or something.

That's an interesting theory, for me it simulated frame rate drops until i checked and realised there was no frame drops :)

I've gotten used to it after a few hours of playing but it just felt more like an unfinished and choppy animation that potentially will be improved throughout Early Access.

Originally posted by LordyMatsuo:

Originally posted by TiredTyrant:

I think it's a intended type of visual feedback when hitting something. To simulate resistance or something.

That's an interesting theory, for me it simulated frame rate drops until i checked and realised there was no frame drops :)

I've gotten used to it after a few hours of playing but it just felt more like an unfinished and choppy animation that potentially will be improved throughout Early Access.

It's intended, similar to how fighting games or the more recent god of war do it. Holding frames on key points like an animation is a fundamental animation technique that's been used in games to make impacts feel punchier for quite a while, with more mainstream adoption outside of fighter games becoming more popular in the past few years.

Having a blade catch on the way through adds weight, makes the resumption of the animation feel more like follow through, and is very clearly an artistic design; animations don't just randomly pause like this without being very specifically told to.

It's like the graphics. It might not be to your taste, but it's an artistic choice and I can more or less guarantee it's staying. It was done intentionally, time was put into it, and it adds to the game.