Character animations

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tonkra

next step is that you ask for elezens to fly like little bats with their ears, eh?

---

Um...yes, please!

It's still possible we ae seen aspects rendered that do not contain all animations.

However feedback and complaints is what SE waits for. That's how they bring what fans want, and without they will focus on what they get.

They work their butts off an so many aspects to remake the tile as fast as they can. Get tunnel vision, and need clear eyes to see things they may not so they can work on it. (hince alpha) then Beta to polish.

It seems OP is upset over the "looks" of the motions. The cosmetic value of character animation in this game is something I care so little about it's almost immeasurable. As far as the actual functionality, when I first tried ffxiv I was greatly annoyed by how awful the control of your character was compared to ffxi. I've long since grown accustom to it, but I fully support their decision to improve the control we have over our character's motions. When the devs make an idiotic decision I'm always one of the first to criticize, but this isn't one of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mijin

It seems OP is upset over the "looks" of the motions. The cosmetic value of character animation in this game is something I care so little about it's almost immeasurable. As far as the actual functionality, when I first tried ffxiv I was greatly annoyed by how awful the control of your character was compared to ffxi. I've long since grown accustom to it, but I fully support their decision to improve the control we have over our character's motions. When the devs make an idiotic decision I'm always one of the first to criticize, but this isn't one of them.

---

No, it's not simply the look, it's the feel and weight. It fit the aesthetic, it fit the pace, and it fit the gameplay

As much as people seem adamant on denying it, games are more than just 'gameplay'. The sights and sounds, the feel and artistic integrity can greatly affect how you perceive a game. It all comes together to create an experience, and I'd rather that experience be fresh than one akin to something I'm already paying to play somewhere else. XIV had issues, no doubt, but why not build, fix and improve upon it's unique structure rather than throw it all out?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kazaran

They work their butts off an so many aspects to remake the tile as fast as they can. Get tunnel vision, and need clear eyes to see things they may not so they can work on it. (hince alpha) then Beta to polish.

---

well hopefully they're going to invite better beta testers than in the last beta phase <.<

Two things to keep in mind:

1. All video footage that we have seen so far is running at <= 30 FPS (however, that does not forgive some of the "laggy" choppiness of characters skipping from one point to another, as seen in the newest trailer)

2. There is no motion blur.

Hence, it currently looks like ass, but running the game on a decent rig at 60+ FPS and/or adding motion blur should be more than enough to make ARR buttery smooth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tonkra

seriously i like the white mages spell effect (while casting) much more what we have now.



GW2 is the most terrible example for animations, graphics and natural movement.. and character proportions. . you cant be serious.

Lalafell animations more relastic than -> Asura animations.. that been said.




i think the miq'uote walking has some kind of cat movement ... in a human way.

next step is that you ask for elezens to fly like little bats with their ears, eh? ;XD or the miq'uote moving on their 4 feets like Charrs in GW2 eh? ;XD

---

The Miqo'te actions seem very good with the tail / ear motions of what I saw.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tonkra

seriously i like the white mages spell effect (while casting) much more what we have now.



GW2 is the most terrible example for animations, graphics and natural movement.. and character proportions. . you cant be serious.

Lalafell animations more relastic than -> Asura animations.. that been said.

miq'uote moving on their 4 feets like Charrs in GW2 eh? ;XD

---

http://fireden.net/wp-content/upload...ing_charr1.png

Let's have generic cat women instead of an entirely unique race.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tonkra

GW2 is the most terrible example for animations, graphics and natural movement.. and character proportions. . you cant be serious.

Lalafell animations more relastic than -> Asura animations.. that been said.

---

I don't believe anybody is comparing GW2 animation quality to FFXIV 1.0. I think its super obvious FFXIV takes the cake on animation (duh). Nobody is asking for GW2 animation. What is being stated is that GW2 has been able to pull off having start/stop/land animations without any problems to gameplay. If GW2 can do it, so can ARR.

As for default walking backwards controls, I'm not against it. But please don't take out those beautifully fluid animation cues I'm so in love with!

I sort of see what the OP means. The characters in the game lost that since of weight to them when they move. Like when they turn they don't lean or when they stop to move to another direction, they aren't shifting their weight. If you've played Monster Hunter you'd understand. Motion Blur and a low FPS wouldn't remove that feel. Now everything sort of feels static as though I was playing another MMO. Even though yes animation lock is retarded, this is not a 3 second animation, it's a sense of movement and weight; that every turn you make looks as though it took effort and not something robotic.

BUT this probably needs to happen since they are streamlining the game to fit other MMO's. Again as MH Frontier as an example, it is wonky as hell to control with a mouse and keyboard but perfect for a controller. Most MMO's don't focus their gameplay around the controller but FFXIV 1.0 sort of did. As much as I loved the "movement" of 1.0, I see the reason to why they would have to get rid of it.

I thought the characters animations on the trailer were.... well, pretty bad compared to what we have now, but at the same time it felt like the animation lock was still there.

Even though I don't think the problem on v1.xx was the animation lock, but the lag that don't really let you react in time.

Still I think the solution for keeping the weight and realism of the characters after performing actions can be dealt without animation locks: Just add more movement animations like rolls or whatever movements you cold do after performing an action and want to move the hell away, we are warriors and we are heavily trained, our characters should be able to do this:

Simple martial arts rolls:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h--81cAk1M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4K_OyUlcVU

Parkour Rolling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4g0PeLVKT4

So imagine you are performing a dragoon jump and want to get the hell away because you see the ifrit cracks appearing and you are pressing the left key, the dragoon could roll to the left while landing instead of just standing there and then reacting and moving to the left.

Just an idea.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kasathar

I'm amazed at how picky and overly critical people are about something is still a work in progress.
In any case, even when they are done I know there's still going to be people winning about the most miniscule things that might not even be an issue.

---

No one is being picky -- Just compare the animations between the two versions, if it doesn't change post Alpha and Beta, it's been scaled back horribly.

I really hope the animations change, but if they don't, then w/e. I really do enjoy the current animations we have compared to the 2.0 alpha footage a lot more. Actually, I should be ashamed to admit this, but the animations are part of the reason why I enjoy XIV. Without the high quality animations, it will feel too much like every other MMO. Though I can't blame SE for cutting down on animations for the sake of cutting cost for production.

I can't wait for the real beta... I'm going to count how many threads get a reply to with "IT'S A BETA".

Why can't things be right the first go around?

Why did they even have to make 2.0?

Hm.

I guess I am the only one that LIKED how the characters moved and fought , in the very brief glimpse we got, from the trailer. I thought it looked way less clunky than it does now. While I sure they can adjust it, you simply cant please everyone. Just about anything literally will be better than what we have now.

I still miss auto target from xi, so maybe I am not the best judge. To each his own I guess

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trollestia

I can't wait for the real beta... I'm going to count how many threads get a reply to with "IT'S A BETA".

---

okay, then maybe wait for the real alpha, too?

what is wrong with you people.

I must admit...... I don't see a difference ._.; Looks the same for me

While I was the one two years ago going "It's just beta! This will all get fixed. They can't leave it like this, obviously!" to critical disappointment, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt since this is pre-alpha.

When beta rolls around and it's still like this, then I'll voice a stronger air of concern.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dannythm

Still I think the solution for keeping the weight and realism of the characters after performing actions can be dealt without animation locks: Just add more movement animations like rolls or whatever movements you cold do after performing an action and want to move the hell away, we are warriors and we are heavily trained, our characters should be able to do this

---

I think that's a great idea.
Would stop the animation lock problem while still maintaining the beautiful and realistic movements most came to like on their characters :)
Maybe I'm the only person who feels this way but seeing the new trailer shocked me a bit - seeing the characters move as unnatural as they do in other MMORPGs felt horrible.
It was a "Oh, so FFXIV is becoming the SAME as them"-feeling. Characters having actual weight was one of the little things which made me go back to FFXIV over the past 2 years whenever I tried out other MMOs because it gave me the feeling of really being IN this game not just moving around a few pixels.
But I totally understand that others don't appreciate that as much as I do so Danny's idea would provide a great way of making both groups of people happy :)

Having follow through animations does not cause animation lock... animation lock causes animation lock.

Animations have 0 control over your actual ability to do anything in a game, developers create limitations in order to preserve the fidelity of the animations "it wouldn't look good if someone moved during this animation, so let's lock actions and movement until it completes."

You can remove that rule and still leave things in place like follow through as a character slows down to a stop, you just allow them to suddenly change direction during this follow through, with blending it sure as hell wouldn't look any worse than completely removing all follow through, which gives characters a robotic feeling when they move.

I'm perfectly fine with animation lock being done away with, especially in places where it made battles needlessly difficult, but one thing the game's movement has always done is give my character a sense of being physically grounded, something that a lot of MMOs lack, because the animations are floaty and rigid.

I'm not going to quit FFXIV over this, but considering the animations already exist, I do hope they decide to re-implement them, sans animation lock.

it's really strange though how nobody complained about the animations two weeks ago. back then it was... grass. and now nobody's complaining about grass. it's something different.

this community just picks some TOTALLY RANDOM THING to flip out about and fires up the bandwagon. it's ridiculous to watch. and most of the people doing most of the flipping out seem to be the players who largely play the least. what's that about?

and we haven't even had an alpha test yet. people are just pressing their faces up against their monitors tearing apart what essentially amounts to a commercial advertising the upcoming release of a product. it's like when dominos decided to remake its pizzas, and reintroduce them to the public hoping to correct the mistakes people pointed out at focus groups. so they release a commercial talking about the new pizza and the ingredients and showing a couple people eating it.

...and people watching this commercial start flipping out about the SHAPE of the PARMESAN CHEESE PARTICLES. and the pepperonis LOOK like they taste bad. and the CHEESE melted in a REALLY STRANGE PATTERN. they better FIX this right now!

okay but have you tried the pizza yet? can you be sure about these problems through experience and personal testing?

no. the answer is no.

so try the pizza first. if it's still not satisfactory to you, tell the devs and give them constructive examples of what you did and didn't like, and what could make it better. don't flip out about a PICTURE of the pizza, or how it looks in a COMMERCIAL.

and last, but not least- while presentation is absolutely important, yes... the bottom line is that the pizza has to taste good. if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter how good the pizza looks- nobody will eat it. get the taste right and you can start to worry more about the presentation.

why is that important to think about?

ffxiv 1.0 was a pizza with all looks and tasted like cardboard. look how that worked out. so you want to keep your cardboard-tasting pizza because you fear change?

bon appetit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ikkenoe

so try the pizza first. if it's still not satisfactory to you, tell the devs and give them constructive examples of what you did and didn't like, and what could make it better.

---

The whole point of this forum is to give feedback over things we see about this game, either current changes or future changes. Nothing is wrong with saying ON TIME that something is not satisfactory to us.
Because if we wait until we can taste the pizza aka FFXIV is released it might be too late to tell them a problem/something we are not happy about.
This is the first time I complained about anything in 2.0 because it's something essential to how I pick which MMO to play. The "grass protest" was never a real protest to begin with because only one or two people ever flipped out over it while everyone else was perfectly fine with it.
Here everyone agrees that the current animations look better than what we can see in the current trailer, people only argue about how important they are.
Nobody would complain though about having realistic-looking animations WITHOUT getting animation lock back.

Because don't forget - no matter how great your pizza tastes, nobody is gonna buy it if the cardboard box it is in has a picture of a pile of dog crap on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ikkenoe

it's really strange though how nobody complained about the animations two weeks ago. back then it was... grass. and now nobody's complaining about grass. it's something different.

this community just picks some TOTALLY RANDOM THING to flip out about and fires up the bandwagon. it's ridiculous to watch. and most of the people doing most of the flipping out seem to be the players who largely play the least. what's that about?

and we haven't even had an alpha test yet. people are just pressing their faces up against their monitors tearing apart what essentially amounts to a commercial advertising the upcoming release of a product. it's like when dominos decided to remake its pizzas, and reintroduce them to the public hoping to correct the mistakes people pointed out at focus groups. so they release a commercial talking about the new pizza and the ingredients and showing a couple people eating it.

...and people watching this commercial start flipping out about the SHAPE of the PARMESAN CHEESE PARTICLES. and the pepperonis LOOK like they taste bad. and the CHEESE melted in a REALLY STRANGE PATTERN. they better FIX this right now!

okay but have you tried the pizza yet? can you be sure about these problems through experience and personal testing?

no. the answer is no.

so try the pizza first. if it's still not satisfactory to you, tell the devs and give them constructive examples of what you did and didn't like, and what could make it better. don't flip out about a PICTURE of the pizza, or how it looks in a COMMERCIAL.

and last, but not least- while presentation is absolutely important, yes... the bottom line is that the pizza has to taste good. if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter how good the pizza looks- nobody will eat it. get the taste right and you can start to worry more about the presentation.

why is that important to think about?

ffxiv 1.0 was a pizza with all looks and tasted like cardboard. look how that worked out. so you want to keep your cardboard-tasting pizza because you fear change?

bon appetit.

---

People were complaining about the animation two weeks ago.

lurk moar.

The whole pizza analogy doesn't work seeing as presentation does matter in video games.

And even in fine dining, the best meal ever will be marked down if it's a sloppy mess on the plate.

Faster combat is better, slow animations wouldn't work well with the new TP system anyway

They have bigger problems to worry about than a few people nitpicking animations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atoli

Because don't forget - no matter how great your pizza tastes, nobody is gonna buy it if the cardboard box it is in has a picture of a pile of dog crap on it.

---

another stupid example. gross exaggeration. sky is falling rhetoric. 2.0 looks fantastic. people are just splitting hairs over preferences in animation style.

i feel like i'm trying to talk sense into religious zealots.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ikkenoe

another stupid example. gross exaggeration. sky is falling rhetoric. 2.0 looks fantastic. people are just splitting hairs over preferences in animation style.

i feel like i'm trying to talk sense into religious zealots.

---

the graphics look amazing, the animations look godawful

I doubt they are gonna change it. Animation lock is one of the biggest probs in this game atm, cause tanking something and standing there doing nothing in fear of getting hit by a OHKO move is not fun, man i swear ppl play games for the wrong reason these days grass and char movement and not actual game play.

I liked animation lock. You want to do a powerful skill that does great damage? Get locked into place and watch a cool animation. I don't care if this is alpha/beta/actual game, I don't care for it.

Animation lock would work TOTALLY different in 2.0 simply because the stupid lag won't be there... but people didn't like animation lock so we get weird animations period >.>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jocko

While the new casting and spell animations in the trailer looked great, is anyone else disappointed by the overall animation changes? One of my favorite things about XIV were the realistic and grounded character animations. You moved and stopped with momentum, characters would turn and face things properly, and it all felt really good. The gameplay videos look as if they've thrown all of that way and replaced it with a standard MMO movement system (With the typical, really awkward back pedaling motion) and everything looks choppy and weightless

Perhaps it's simply alpha footage, but I have a feeling this was an intended design change

---

I'm willing to bet it's just Alpha footage. They're still trying to just to get the bare bones workings in place after all.

However, speaking of animations, since they've finally done away with "fading" when you swap equipment, I hope this also means that they've done something about animation lock. Seriously, I'm sick of dieing to AoE or other nonsense because my character was stuck in a lengthy attack animation.

Ok. For the record. I want to say that for all the people who are saying,
"Oh it's just alpha footage, it will get better."

Are you serious? This argument was used all along during the beta process of FFXIV, and many of those things we complained about still have yet to change.

I'm sorry, but at several points in the new footage, the animation was total garbage. I thought the video was great and I am excited, but the game doesn't get better when we accept the terd sandwich.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roaran

Ok. For the record. I want to say that for all the people who are saying,
"Oh it's just alpha footage, it will get better."

Are you serious?

---

Because logically games and products improve from Alpha > RTM.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jennestia

Because logically games and products improve from Alpha > RTM.

---

This.

The noticeable change you get from Pre-Alpha/Alpha to Beta is drastically larger than the noticeable difference you get from Beta to full release.

This is what I've been saying since the Gamescom demo and I got crap for it too. As others have pointed out, I too felt that the characters have lost their "weight" when it came to animations. However, I do hope that this will somehow be adjusted later, preferably during beta.

Also, is it just me, or the male Miqo'te in the video pretty much has the exact same battle stance as midland Hyur and then some?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atoli

I think that's a great idea.
Would stop the animation lock problem while still maintaining the beautiful and realistic movements most came to like on their characters :)
Maybe I'm the only person who feels this way but seeing the new trailer shocked me a bit - seeing the characters move as unnatural as they do in other MMORPGs felt horrible.
It was a "Oh, so FFXIV is becoming the SAME as them"-feeling. Characters having actual weight was one of the little things which made me go back to FFXIV over the past 2 years whenever I tried out other MMOs because it gave me the feeling of really being IN this game not just moving around a few pixels.
But I totally understand that others don't appreciate that as much as I do so Danny's idea would provide a great way of making both groups of people happy :)

---

Thanks! I thought nobody would read/like my idea =P. I really think it would be possible to do it just by adding a few animations to each job/race whatever and including the code on where they are viable to activate.

But we don't know if SE has anything planned on this regard, I mean they said hey will get away with the animation lock, but they didn't say how they are doing that. I hope it's not just making it feel like any other MMO out there.... that would felt terrible for this game.

We will have to wait and see.

Guild Wars 2 has stop/slow-down running animations, so there's no reason SE had to remove them. Aren't they supposed to be "bringing it up to standard", anyway?

Was anything mentioned in the ff25 presentation in regards to the change in animation? I would also be interested what ppl are saying on the Japanese side...

Looks more to me like they haven't got the blending down on the animations more then anything, it's one thing that guildwars 2 nails really well which makes every action you make the character do transition into the next almost seamlessly without the action lock that plagues FFXIV currently.

This is something they can tweak certainly, it's not a hard thing to do and really just comes down to the animators getting animation timings right so you can keep that fluidity of motion on the characters.

However I'm a gameplay over graphics man so I'm not to phased on the stop/start nature shown in the trailer.

To me the battle animations were pretty awesome, the movement ones though were kinda weird sometimes and did look more weightless, and is it just me or is the lalafell run animation different? the legs didn't look to be moving as fast lol.

Personally, I hate it in a game where you Press S out of Combat and your character walks backwards. It looks stupid. You should be able to turn around and face the camera while moving.

That said, I'm pretty sure Yoshida said in an interview that this was Toggle-able.