looping animation only shows current activated states. However, players will tell when a state disappeared, because the animation for that state wouldn't be there anymore
looping animation constantly reminds player which state they have on, without having to remember which animation "was" activated.
Sample:
https://youtu.be/7mG2SoTYlI8?t=32
look at how animation loops on the character in a loop when that state is in effect.
Having an animation looping would be useful. I will look at how loops could be done while the state is active. It would be similar to state overlays except, for more general animations.
But I wouldn't say it's necessarily better than on-add or on-remove. In particular, the purpose mnay not necessarily be to indicate whether something exists. After all like you said it only plays at the beginning or end of the state.
For example, if you're using a plugin that allows you to create more advanced animations like these when a particular state is added, it would likely improve your game's battle flow by a lot.
Naturally, you could always just loop the shiny animation for the duration of the state, but what about the beginning and end?
Not that I'm hinting a new plugin or anything.
I like Harvards idea. Yanfly had a script in VX/VXA that did the same thing. But I wonder what that would do for lag? Curious as to what would happen if you have enough states on all the battlers on the screen.
Either way, the plugin would prove useful.
There will probably be some lag unless there was a more efficient way to process animations. On this 5-year-old vista machine it's already lagging when I try to record the video while playing 4 state animations.