Are stylish UI animations making your app feel slow?

We added smooth 300ms hover animations, bouncy modal entrances, and custom loading transitions to make our UI feel premium. On paper the designs looked incredible and received glowing praise on social media. However during real user testing people kept double-clicking buttons because the interaction response felt sluggish instead of crisp. Users do not care how fluid an animation looks if it delays their primary action by even a fraction of a second. Removing unnecessary transition delays and switching to instant visual feedback made the app feel twice as fast without modifying a single API endpoint. Flawless motion design should always serve usability and never slow down user intent.
Have you ever had to scale back UI animations for performance?