The whole "wind down animations slowing response" is BS, if you character continue running after you stopped pressing your "walk forward" key then you should complain about your connection, not the animation. It doesn't matter if the system displays you as constantly moving forward no matter what you do or plays a different animation for the turning part.

If anything the current animation look shitty as hell. Have you seen the new walking animation for lalafells? They've lost the last portion of realism they had in 1.0 (which was very little in the first place)

They might improve the animations for the release, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. If you don't care about aesthetics, then you shouldn't care about graphics either, simply because those are tied together.