Its obvious that low quality animations that are only a few still frames being quickly shuffled through is going to look like shit, but when you come across a developer that actually takes the time to make a good quality animation, or has/pays someone else to make the animations, then those animations greatly improve the overall appeal of the game.
I've seen people leave negative comments on game threads if a game does not contain any animations, which probably explains why so many devs include animations in their game even though they don't know how to make good ones.
As far as I'm concerned, I'll take a game with beautiful static renders and zero animations over a game with bad animations souring the experience every few minutes. Animations are overrated.
I'd rather play a game with shit character designs and no animations than a game with perfect character design and choppy/looped animations it just feels so bland and souless.
I personally find animations to be more engaging for games. As for novel types, it can be there or not but I go strict story-wise without animations.
Some says just watch porn or hentai if I want animation but I still want my games to have some sort of animations that gives better engagement in games generally.
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For example, what if you are playing a pixel game 2d platformer, and whenever you caught someone/something or vise versa, and there's just a single still frame to see, it just doesn't feel right (and yes, I include screenshake image like most japanese games in same category). Much more for 3d games (not to be confused with 3dcg ones), if that 3d game doesn't have animations, you better change profession from developer to comedian.
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In the end it's all about opinion considering there's supply and demand for such things.
I've never seen a high quality animation that I didn't like due to it being animation, but they are harder to get right. I think a dev's first game should skip it unless they are already proficient in making them so they don't end up adding something low quality.
If the person knows how to animate well, then yes. It adds more life and immersion to it. Monster Girl Island is a great example. The animations in that were really nice and detailed. Fuck I wish that game got finished.
If the person sucks at animating though it can turn good art into shit very quickly.
They can, most often though I'd prefer without.
Some times people actually put in a good amount of effort and it pays off and makes a scene better.
Other times they actually take away from it with janky animation.
Some actually are horrible in implementing it where it becomes a system hog trying to play it.
I prefer a set of still images over an animation 95% of the time.
On newer games it improves the game so much. Its more fun to play for me also.
But when i think on older games where animations wasnt included...these games were also great