[dev1037] Implementing new character motions for majority of weapon skills
After reading about the upcoming changes in spell and discipline skills being an increase in the size of the special effect itself, many players have responded that while that may work great as a minor fix for a few special effects, the true change needed is in the player character animations themselves.
As things stand now, Gladiator for example, has several skills that all share the exact same 360 spinning slash animation. Now while this is fine for one or two attacks of the same type, attacks such as Circle Blade, Spin Stroke, Phalanx, etc. should have a totally different character attack animation than Red Lotus Blade I and II. Marauders and Lancers suffer from the same style of repeat animations, or even animations that really dont fit the skill, such as Disorient. Disorent's description is "Flick dust, sand, or soil at an enemy, reducing the target\'s evasion and increasing enmity. Effect may stack up to three times" yet the animation is exactly the same as any other Marauder buff, and has no display of a dust effect, or showing the character model reach for the ground and toss something towards the enemy.
A few examples of great animations already implemented in the game are Pugilist's Simian Thrash, Seismic Strike, Gladiator's Luminous Spire, and Archer's Wide Volley, so I know the potential for great motion captured weapon skill actions is there...however is the lack of different animations for the majority of other skills the fact that you guys used motion capture? If so, I guess that would be the reason why its harder than normal to implement different character animations for most weapon skills attacks or buffs.
Hopefully this increase in special effect size is just the first step in improving the visual look and Final Fantasy feel of XIV, especially looking at what type of animations were achieved in Final Fantasy XI. For example, the various sword, great axe, lance, and hand to hand weapon skill animations:
Final Fantasy XI weapon skill animations
As you can see, its ok to use similar animations for a few skills within the same tier or elemental type, but the majority of animations should not be similar to one another. Also any multi-strike weapon skill should have the character actually performing multiple strikes. Of course you guys may be waiting to implement more animations with the upcoming new battle system, however we're still in the dark as far as that goes.
Another great improvement to the current animations would be to differentiate the casting animations for astral and umbral style magic, as suggested by another FFXIV player in another thread.
In summation, some of the current play attack animations are great and detailed, however, the majority of a discipline's weapon skills should not use the same attack animations, and we definitely need more diverse animations.
Also please consider showing graphical changes (enemy size change, special effect size change, etc.) in small video clips rather than just images in the dev tag posts before implementation. It would help players really get a better impression of whatever fixes are in store.