What do you think of jobs having different stances than classes?

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Originally Posted by Dano

they first will need to address the animations when activating skills, at this point they all use the same generic "power up" pose.

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Squat your way to glory.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Squat your way to glory.

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lol indeed

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

We checked in with the animation team about whether or not races will have different animations and they said that there aren't any plans to have unique animations per race. Instead they'd rather show the uniqueness of each race through their emotes rather than their battle animations. They did say however that they are trying to create unique animations for many of the class and job actions by the launch of A Realm Reborn. Please keep in mind that there is a possibility that they might not be completed in time but that they will do their best!

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Not what I wanted to hear. The game already has more emotes than I could ever imagine using, much less use practically. I would much rather see the animations I see and use every day have a unique feel that helps separate the races from eachother. The races in FFXIV already feel way too homogenous, and adding more emotes will not change that.

FFXI did a masterful job of making each race look and feel special through unique animation and game lore. I was really hoping we would be seeing more of that in 2.0.

If the races don't look unique through animations in 2.0, and we're stuck with the same ugly shit, I'll be disappointed.

Well you got remember this is a base game for casual players not hardcore, although they would like to make hardcore players play this game... this is still a base game aimed for casuals-----------

Casuals are more into emote and not moving out of cities play style... while hardcore are more into combat and hard combat content.
By adding more emote they will attract more casuals and that's what they are aiming for i guess.

Attract the casual attract a friend (a friend who is hardcore will become a HARDCORE casual!!!)

Se is very very Not smart if they don't add differential in race / class / job animation.

I'd rather have a difference in battle style then in emote.
not a good way to aim to be honest.

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Originally Posted by Gukswar

Well you got remember this is a base game for casual players not hardcore, although they would like to make hardcore players play this game... this is still a base game aimed for casuals-----------

Se is very very Not smart if they don't add differential in race / class / job animation.

I'd rather have a difference in battle style then in emote.
not a good way to aim to be honest.

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Yes, because animations have so much to do with hardcore vs. casual.

wow this is what i was hoping for diff animations for race :(

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

I suppose updated/varied skill animations will suffice though.

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Indeed. I'm waiting for that for long time.. ><

Thats a shame to hear.

ffxi really had that extra touch of love when it came to emotes and animation in general, I understand that it is just more feasable to copy/paste battle animations to all races...but I will miss it dearly.

Do any of you actually play this game? While the animations are similar in theme, each race casts differently. Lalafell look nothing like Roegadyn while casting.

We just need different animation based on spell type (white magic, black magic, etc.).

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Originally Posted by KiriA500

Do any of you actually play this game? While the animations are similar in theme, each race casts differently. Lalafell look nothing like Roegadyn while casting.

We just need different animation based on spell type (white magic, black magic, etc.).

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Yes, but the differences are very subtle to the point it's not that different -- Compare their last FF MMO, even though it's different games, they've proven they have it in them to make it even more varied and unique per race per gender.

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

We checked in with the animation team about whether or not races will have different animations and they said that there aren't any plans to have unique animations per race. Instead they'd rather show the uniqueness of each race through their emotes rather than their battle animations. They did say however that they are trying to create unique animations for many of the class and job actions by the launch of A Realm Reborn. Please keep in mind that there is a possibility that they might not be completed in time but that they will do their best!

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See, its given low priority after all

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

We checked in with the animation team about whether or not races will have different animations and they said that there aren't any plans to have unique animations per race. Instead they'd rather show the uniqueness of each race through their emotes rather than their battle animations. They did say however that they are trying to create unique animations for many of the class and job actions by the launch of A Realm Reborn. Please keep in mind that there is a possibility that they might not be completed in time but that they will do their best!

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Seems to me like they decided on the emote route because its easier to do. lol

Though this was always XIV's problem, from copypasta landscape, hard to miss graphical glitches, client crashes, semi-identical animations, lack of "cool" gear at start, screwy untested battle/class mechanics etc etc.

basically there was alot of corner cutting.

While I do completely understand that SE is trying to rush and focus on the major changes in the game for ARR/2.0, which inevitably means that they'll have to cut corners on "less important" aspects of the game, I'm just kind of worried that XIV will never receive the same kind of love and attention XI did when it comes to those little things everybody takes for granted.

Like for instance, go on your monk and try all your fist abilities and you'll find that there is no elemental effect on your hits! you'd think that with "Fists of Fire" you'd see fire when you hit a mob, no?

FFXI had that.

So, I'll say it again... XIV needs to do everything XI did and it has to do it better.

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

We checked in with the animation team about whether or not races will have different animations and they said that there aren't any plans to have unique animations per race. Instead they'd rather show the uniqueness of each race through their emotes rather than their battle animations. They did say however that they are trying to create unique animations for many of the class and job actions by the launch of A Realm Reborn. Please keep in mind that there is a possibility that they might not be completed in time but that they will do their best!

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Well now... that's horribly disappointing. I was hoping 2.0 would fix the bland indifference between the races but instead it's just being hand-waved away. I guess having any real cultural heritage or uniqueness among them would just be too much effort. I for one cannot wait to play a bland mid-sized grey doll that has no representation in the world or where it belongs with.

At the very least, please let us have much more varied character creation features.

No new race animations make me sad! whats the point of being a mammoth beast if i swing my blade same as you tiny folk!

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh...yojwo1_400.gif
MNK POWA! :O

I really hope they at least change the standard casting animation. Holding your weapon to your face with a glow effect around your character is kind of boring.

I really miss the FFXI casting animations, they were my favorite of any MMO I can recall playing. Black magic for example seemed like it really required a lot of effort and concentration to cast, and it gave the spell in question visual emphasis. White magic was gentle, almost serene, very much in line with the spells tied to the animation.

Either way, the current casting effects are lacking in visual distinction, all we have is a color swap - and they seem to be a step back in regards to creativity when what we should have gotten with XIV was a step forward.

Although I am sad about no race-specific stances, I hope to god they do something about the magic casting animations (and magic animations in general). This is one of those things I think FFXI nailed and should just be adopted outright.

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Originally Posted by Theplatter

Pretty sad, considering "that other online FF game" had different emotes AND action animations per race...

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I'm not sad about this. What I was sad about was that in FFXI other races looked cooler doing the same weapon skill I was using.

To be honest here... I kind of forgot that there were different race animations in FFXI. I'm more glad about the weapon skill animations. Job animations are really nice, I must give the team kudos for that one. :)

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Originally Posted by Yucie

If the races don't look unique through animations in 2.0, and we're stuck with the same ugly shit, I'll be disappointed.

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Yeah, FFXIV sure is ugly...?

There's only so many ways someone can swing an axe... it's kind of excessive to add hundreds of different animations for every race, one for each axe-swing etc.

They need to add more casting animations though.

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Originally Posted by bobbygunz

Yeah, FFXIV sure is ugly...?

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Well... I mean... Yeah, it kind of is. Having an engine that is capable of rendering high poly-counts doesn't mean anything if you don't do anything interesting with said polycounts.

Asking for unique animations for the races is not as unreasonable as you're making it out to be. Every single MMO I've played (starting with FFXI) has been able to pull it off with flying colors, so why should we give SE a free pass now for FFXIV? On paper unique animations might not sound "necessary," but the fact that my character looks almost indistinguishably the same animation-wise from a hyur or elzen when wielding a sword and shield adds dramatically to FFXIV's feel of blandness and homogeneity that people so often complain about. If SE wants to address this feel then they need to address the animations with something other than more emotes. I may not have liked the Mithran sword&board animations in FFXI very much, but I would much rather have them back in FFXIV just so my character would feel and look more different from the other races.

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Originally Posted by Radnar

Well... I mean... Yeah, it kind of is. Having an engine that is capable of rendering high poly-counts doesn't mean anything if you don't do anything interesting with said polycounts.

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lol this game is much better with its graphics then most mmos i've seen, not to mention their animations are very realistic, sure it would be better with more variation but that doesnt make a game ugly.
really? is that how it is? screw the high detail in the characters and the enemies, screw the environments and time they put into the graphics, if theres no race specific casting then the whole game is ugly

i would agree with you that it would be cool to have that variation and it could only help.
but that little thing is not a pretty and ugly decider for me, come on now

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Originally Posted by Radnar

Not what I wanted to hear. The game already has more emotes than I could ever imagine using, much less use practically. I would much rather see the animations I see and use every day have a unique feel that helps separate the races from eachother. The races in FFXIV already feel way too homogenous, and adding more emotes will not change that.

FFXI did a masterful job of making each race look and feel special through unique animation and game lore. I was really hoping we would be seeing more of that in 2.0.

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This. So hard. I rarely use emotes and when I do it's because I'm sitting around with LS mates waiting for someone to come back from AFK and that's it.

If you are gonna be adamant about not diversifying battle animations between races, please at least when you add new Roegadyn emotes make them manly and rugged. A lot of their emotes make me sick with how "lol big guy looking like a softy" they are :/

And my god give us back Galka's psych, the chipmunk face my Roegadyn makes during /psych is scary.

Realistic animations only do so much. And the game's 'realism' pretty much went out the window with Tanaka's going.. so..

As previously stated by multiple people in this thread, if you took a look at FFXI it does an AMAZING job of separating the races and making each look unique through a handful of good emotes, and the rest focusing on battle animations, as well as casting animations.

I'm not asking for hundreds or thousands of different animations - I'm asking simply for a handful of good ones, that separate each race and make them unique, while making battle and spellcasting a little less boring.

- The spellcasting animation is pretty much the same for each race, with very minute differents ~ look down, hold your first to your face and eat it while casting.
- For some races, polearms and great axes share the same pool of animations.. which are boring. Combat should be a tad flashy, especially since we don't have too much control over it directly.
- They made unique weapon skill animations that, for these skills, none of the assets are shared for use in other skills. Why can't they do this with some racial or gender animations?

It's not a lot to ask. My hume feels boring every time I'm doing something on PLD, or DRG.

Make it better, SE. Learn from FFXI.

I just hope they fix the /dance and other stupid emotes... Like really? How graceless does my character have to look?

This all ties back to something I have noticed about Yoshi-P as a director. I love basically everything that they have done in the last year, and while I'm not the type of person to get overly excited about things, I am very much interested in seeing how ARR turns out. That being said, for better or worse, Yoshi-P very, very much loves patterns. I'm not positive what his background is, but I'm tempted to guess he has at the very least had a lot of exposure to computer science principles, because they come out in spades in his game direction.

Everything they've done in the last year has been about encapsulation and re usability. Every class gets abilities at the same level, of the same category. Job quests are structured the same, and story aside, play out almost identically from a purely game-play perspective. Primals follow the same progression (okay, sample size is small here, but still); same with dungeons.

Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it certainly makes producing large amounts of content quickly much easier. In addition, it also makes things easier to understand for new players, it's formulaic. By the same token, that very formulaic nature makes it stagnant. This is just another example of that formulaic nature coming through. I very much hope that we will see the dev team take more chances in ARR.

As many people have said: it's the big things that draw you in, but it's the little things that keep you around. Little racial/class qwirks are part of what make a good MMO great. Similarly, you can't say that it would take too many resources. It would take the same resources they are already using to produce more race specific emotes. You don't need 7 different animations for every WS, but at least a different idle stance, a slightly different style of Auto-attack.

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Originally Posted by Arkine

As title says.

Currently Classes and Jobs have the same animations, same attack patterns and motions so what would you guys think if they were spiced up a bit with new animations?


A Pugilist is a boxer he relies entirely on his hands and the old fighting animations had alot of jabs in the melee cycles that I think SE removed in favor of the current animations where the punches are focused. SE could simply put back the jabs and use the current fighting stance.

Monk could get a more Martial arts-eque stance and use the current animations where attacks seems to have a lot of force behind them.

http://bucultureshock.com/wp-content...ngarkungfu.gif

Paladin could get a refined stance that shows that they're refined knights and not simple gladiators.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ph2_gallery/97114.jpg

In the 2.0/ARR Screens we see Black Mage getting new casting animation that's alot more fitting than the simple one we have now and thats a step in the right direction now they just need to give WHM a better stance and I think they're set.

http://www.ffandmore.com/wp-content/...Black-Mage.png


So what do you guys think?


PS: This is in not a petition or a request, I'm just amusing myself and would honestly be surprised if SE implemented anything close to what I'm talking about.


Extra:

I believe that the devs took a lot of shortcuts with animations in XIV that they didn't in XI and while I excuse this in 1.0 since the game was rushed and they had to focus else where while trying to fix it after it flopped, I can't excuse them for taking any more once ARR hits. The pray emote was disappointing for me because while it was supposed to be an XI throwback, they failed to recreate the animation and instead copied them for some races (check miqote pray vs Mithra /heal) note that they did great on other emotes but I would rather they don't take any more shortcuts on polishing the game.

FFXI Animations differed greatly between jobs and races.


http://ffxistyle.files.wordpress.com...lv_blm_cst.jpg
Notice how the elvaan(Elezen) and the Hume(Hyur) casting black magic are alot different and unique.

This applies to weaponskills too, the animation changed for each race and gender.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH7PY6YjMSY



Its impossible not to compare XI to XIV, and I just can't help but expect from XIV to do everything XI did and do it better.

Am I being unreasonable?

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I think this is a good idea. I would love to see this in XIV and miss this quality and diversity of game play.

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I also miss casting and having my armor flow around me as well. Can we please have our armor reflect our casting, instead of casting just having a visual presence but allowing for also a physical presence.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

yeah let the mages take their weapon out too instead of just standing there

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I believe there is a button for that. :P

Tailored animations sound like a wonderful idea, I really think differentiating the races more would be a good thing. However, I don't think they could ever satisfy everyone. Our characters take on a personality of their own, even though we may have chosen the same race. I'm sure someone playing a gentle giant Roegadyn wouldn't be happy if his animations suddenly became aggressive and macho, or someone playing a wild Miqo'te frustrated that they're stuck with girly mannerisms featuring no aggression at all. The only solution would be allowing us optional animations to further customize our characters with, and I can understand how that's a bit impossible at this stage of development. I am delighted to see the community team taking interest in suggestions like these, even if the final word from the animation crew wasn't what you wanted to hear. It's better than false promises that fail to deliver, for sure.

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Originally Posted by Radnar

Asking for unique animations for the races is not as unreasonable as you're making it out to be.

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Yes it is..

Each Class/Job gets 20 skills..

Assuming we're only talking about Combat thats 7 Current classes plus a minimum of 2 being added for a total of 9.

Thats 180 skills.

5 races, 2 genders, two tribes - lets eliminate tribes, but if your doing races you have to do genders cause girls and guys dont move the same.

Thats 10 race for 180 skils thats 1,800 ability animations.

2.0 has been in development for a year and a half, and FFXIV has some of the most intricate combat animations of any game, let alone an MMO.

I would love to meet the animation team who can create 1,800 noticeably different, aesthetically pleasing combat animations that are FFXIV level intricate while completing all other in game animations in one and a half years...

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Originally Posted by Gidonoidon_Sur

Although I am sad about no race-specific stances, I hope to god they do something about the magic casting animations (and magic animations in general). This is one of those things I think FFXI nailed and should just be adopted outright.

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I totally agree FFXIV is rly lacking when it comes to magic casting animations I liked how FFXI was different from each race. Id love to see different casting animation and stances for even a lot of different spells that would be awesome! :D

Oops, i forgot Auto-Attack... That at least another 210 animations since each Class has three or more auto attack animations...

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Originally Posted by Kiote

Oops, i forgot Auto-Attack... That at least another 210 animations since each Class has three or more auto attack animations...

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You keep throwing numbers around without actually explaining why they're unrealistic.

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Originally Posted by Radnar

You keep throwing numbers around without actually explaining why they're unrealistic.

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Because it takes weeks to create just one of those animations(not including implementation and testing), they cost a fortune, and To actually think up 10 variations of a single skill 180 times is next to impossible.

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Originally Posted by Kiote

Because it takes weeks to create just one of those animations(not including implementation and testing), they cost a fortune, and To actually think up 10 variations of a single skill 1800 times is next to impossible.

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Alright. So then why has every other MMO I've ever played, from FFXI onwards, and every other MMO currently on the market, been able to do it? And don't tell me it's because FFXIV has higher quality animations. FFXIV has a higher polycount, but their competitors already doing comperable - if not better and more varried - animation in their products.

Time may be a limiting factor, but it is no excuse to accept mediocrity.

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Originally Posted by Radnar

Alright. So then why has every other MMO I've ever played, from FFXI onwards, and every other MMO currently on the market, been able to do it? And don't tell me it's because FFXIV has higher quality animations. FFXIV has a higher polycount, but their competitors already doing comperable - if not better and more varried - animation in their products.

Time may be a limiting factor, but it is no excuse to accept mediocrity.

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Because they were in development for 5+ years.

What creates mediocrity is trying to rush out a bunch of crappy Animations in a completely unrealistic time line. Look at all the new gear they have implemented. Even with 1.0's crappy launch you never saw a single instance of clipping in Gear. Now, because they are rushing, every new piece of armour clips through bodies and other pieces of armour.

They could implement race specific animations before relaunch, but you know what we would end up with? The animations at 1.0 launch.

And for the record, FFXIV has significantly more intricate animations than every other MMO on the market. Most other MMO uses the same animation repeatedly and add flashing lights to cover the weapon so users can't see it.

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Originally Posted by Kiote

Because it takes weeks to create just one of those animations(not including implementation and testing), they cost a fortune, and To actually think up 10 variations of a single skill 180 times is next to impossible.

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FFXI probably has that many skills and spells, if not more. A lot of the skills in XIV run off the same base animation - Fast Blade, and several others for example, including Phalanx, are all a sort of spin-around-backhand animation, except with weapon in hand. But, FFXI still manages to make the races unique. Why? Here's how:

Each weapon has.. I don't know.. 3-4 different AA animations that loop and work together seamlessly when they need to.
Weapon skills utilize these recycled animations, accompanied by different visual effects and sounds.
An idle stance and a handful of auto-attack animations that can be used for WS animations isn't that much.

Abilities. Each race has literally one way they use a skill, but each animation per race and per gender is unique. These are only segregated by names and visual effects.

Casting. Each race has a different blue magic, white magic, black magic, ninjutsu, and song casting animation. Other than that, the spells that fall under each category are separated by, again, visual effects.

FFXIV could easily replicate this, and it'd be far easier to come up with new visual effects than making an entirely new animation from scratch.

FFXI did it. So can FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Yucie

FFXI did it. So can FFXIV.

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FFXI was in development for 6 years.

FFXIV has been in development for 1.5 years and they are rebuilding the entire game right down to the server hardware..

Also, a massive number of XI's skills were repeats of other skills. There were actually very few Different animations. They did the same trick as most current MMOs. They used the same animation and added a different light.

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Originally Posted by Kiote

FFXI was in development for 6 years.

FFXIV has been in development for 1.5 years and they are rebuilding the entire game right down to the server hardware..

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That doesn't change the fact that it CAN be done.