I wish we could pick different animation sets for our characters

The title says it all.

I play a female Midlander as a main, and I feel the female Midlander emotes really don't reflect the personality I have for her in mind well. If anything, I imagine her emoting more like an Elezen( male or female) or a Viera in my head.

And before I am told to buy a Fantasia( which I don't need because I still have my level 50 one) and become an Elezen or a Viera, consider this: we meet NPCs of different personalities regardless of race, and since one's body language depends on one's personality too, I find a hard time believing that the entire race would have one body language. Different people grow up in different circumstances, have different life experiences, develop different personalities, and, by extension, different body language. Not every female Midlander has to be a cutesy girly girl, not every male Elezen has to be a stiff and stoic man, and not every Miqo'te has to be an outgoing, emotional person.

I wish we could choose how the characters emote. Like, let the default animations set be tied to race, but then allow override items that will apply new animations to the character. These things can be on Mog Station or be found in the game or whatever. I feel like this would add a lot of diversity and personality to our characters.

I know I am probably asking for something impossible from a technical standpoint, and even if it is, the devs probably won't bother with that much work, but I guess if I never ask, I'll never know.

Anyway, what do you think of this idea? Would you like something like that? Or would you rather just Fantasia?

Personally, I'd prefer all animations be available to everyone regardless of gender or race.

Honestly. It’d be nice to have Hrothgar animations without actually playing one.

I doubt using emotes of the opposite gender will ever happen just for the headache it would give. Similarly trying to convert each and every emote to fit every race/gender might be too much of a task. However giving alternate animations for some emotes should be doable. Sit and Doze (When on a bed.) originally had a single pose each. Eventually more were added you could toggle through just like idle stances. Give it time and if there's enough of a demand we'll probably see it sooner or later.

YES! Being able to choose your animation set would be fantastic. Being able to create a custom set would be heavenly.

I've always wished I could swap one or two animations out for those of another race. I play a lalafel. I love how expressive her emotes are, and MOST of them I'd never change. But that /dance emote... *shudder* And her doze animation for beds makes me very uncomfortable. :/

I never considered a Fantasia for her until the Viera were added. I didn't think I'd like them... but the first time I saw a Viera player, I was struck by how strong and beautiful and just full of personality the character's expression was, no emotes required. Yet, when I made an alt Viera character to test them out, I found the emotes tremendously disappointing. All very similar and... flirty. ie. not to my tastes, and certainly not fitting with the personality of my adorable Teiran. (I *do* really like their /dance though.) If I could choose to replace a Viera's emotes with ones better fitting my character's personality, I'd be able to go through with using a Fantasia. But until the day the option to change emotes is added, I'm afraid I just can't bring myself to make the switch.

So for me... I love this suggestion. It really would make all the difference.

And along with my (probably too big lol) hope that we could mix and match emotes to make a custom set... I'd better add that I'd love to see such an option for voices, too!

Thanks for suggesting this, Eli. I know it would be a lot of work to remake the animations, but it would have such a huge impact that I think it's more than worthwhile. I fully support the idea!

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

Personally, I'd prefer all animations be available to everyone regardless of gender or race.

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This might be entirely the wrong place to ask you this, but in your signature it says "a mass pathology of information", but like what does that mean? Pathology is the study of diseases and such so are you talking about a disease of information? Or does it just sound cool or what.

I agree, the female Midlander walk animation is ridiculous in my opinion, and what you mentioned about them being too cutesy is another issue I'm sure quite a few people take issue with, and this is only talking about F midlanders. Other people have other issues with their chosen races that the option to change animations could remedy.

For me, the male Au Ra walk is possibly the most ridiculous walk in the game, and even after playing as one for maybe 3/4 of a year now, I still haven't gotten fully used to it. Now I have no intention to change races, male Xaela are my favorite race to play as, but I just wish I could replace the absurd walk with another more normal one.

I'd love some of the male Miqo'te animations for my female Miqo'te. Her "personality" is more aligned with their animation set.

I would love to have the Highlander animations. They're so energetic.

Just starting by unlocking the gender based emotes would go a long way. I know some people would love to have the female DRK weapon stance instead of the male version, and I would love to get the male DRG stance instead of the female version. Same with battle and victory emotes. Could make it like the ranger emotes, a version 1 and 2.

Some emote could be difficult to give to other races. Miqo'te emotes use their ears and tail a lot in certain emotes and it could be difficult to translate well to other races.

Maybe when the game is pretty much dead and not getting any major content update, like with FFXI where all the 'would be nice to have things when the game was young and strong' came when it didnt even matter anymore. Glamour didn't even exist for that game til after everything stopped /irritated

Probably will never happen, but would be very cool to have. I think it's actually possible to do in same way how they did this with doze/site/idle emotions, so at this point it's more about time and resources they can spend on it. Maybe one day it will happen.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

This might be entirely the wrong place to ask you this, but in your signature it says "a mass pathology of information", but like what does that mean? Pathology is the study of diseases and such so are you talking about a disease of information? Or does it just sound cool or what.

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It is a reference to Pathoma, a book covering the fundamentals of pathology written by Dr. Hussain Sattar. It's a book used by my school (and a bunch other medical schools throughout the US, I imagine) in the first 2 years in preparation for the first part of medical licensing exams.

The name itself is a pun of sorts. As a melanoma can be thought of as a mass of pigment-producing cells, a "pathoma" is a "mass of pathology." Yeah medical humor's not the best but we love it all the same.

I would love this, but I also think it's probably an impossible workload if you're not doing it from the ground-up (Even then its probably difficult if the skeletons are as different as Lalas and Hrothgar)

I do wholeheartedly support this but indeed some things like walking and running animations may be too hard to pull off. Mostly because of the difference between sizes, really: a lalafell's walk and run looks to be really fast because their model is smaller, whereas Elezen and Au Ra appear to run more slowly because they're taller, but at the end they're running at the same speed as far as gameplay is concerned. Other stuff like /sit, /pose, or /dance may not be as hard (ofc, it would still take up a lot of resources, not denying THAT).

I'd like to see this as well. Personality/mannerisms are part of a character and they shouldn't be tied to other attributes.

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Originally Posted by Mihana

I doubt using emotes of the opposite gender will ever happen just for the headache it would give. Similarly trying to convert each and every emote to fit every race/gender might be too much of a task. However giving alternate animations for some emotes should be doable.

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Copying existing emotes is probably the easiest thing to do. All the races should have the same type of skeleton, they'll be different sizes, some different shapes, but they all move the same joints. If this wasn't the case it would make animations for job actions (skills, poses, etc) very difficult and time consuming to reproduce.

I would love that lalafell walking animation on my midlander tbh.

As a 3D modeler and something of a game designer myself, I can safely say that yes there is a certain amount of work that would need to go into this sort of change. Is it possible? It certainly is. There are technical obstacles of course as with anything involving adding new aspects of a game. It's not really as time consuming nor is it impossible as I've seen some say. I think it would definitely add a huge amount of diversity, as well as adding new character creation options. SE cites that it's a lack of resources and to some degree it is. But that doesn't mean that it's not possible. I agree wholeheartedly with the OP and I'm glad someone finally said it. People may not want to spend money on the Mogstation for something like this, but truth be told, if someone is willing to pay $24 for a mount or $18 for a one-character-only outfit, why not $7 to $10 for an animation pack?

To answer the question about races with tails having animations with races that don't have animated ears or tails: Yes, Mqio'te have ear animations. That isn't an issue, regardless if the Au Ra, for example, don't have ears. The animations would still be compatible. However, there wouldn't be skeleton info for a Miqo'te to Midlander animation swap, since Midlanders don't have tails or animated ears. They would most likely (and again, from experience in similar situations regarding SecondLife) be static. Meaning, the tails would stick straight out and the ears would remain in their default position regardless of the animation. Same for an Au Ra to Midlander switch. The only two races I imagine that would be compatible completely as far as tail animations go would be Au Ra and Miqo'te. Skeleton information is different for each race, for example: The Roegadyn males have a different skeleton structure than the Lalafel males, Midlander males and Miqo Males, etc. So some things would need to be remade to fit each race.

Anyway, I love the idea and I think it would work out very well for not only players such as ourselves, but if implemented correctly, would greatly benefit SE as well.

I saw that one GNB in the GNB storyline that held his sword like Squall (in FF8), and now I want to hold it the same way, why do we have that weird stance with it on our shoulder? T^T

Imagine what peoples would do as female miqo‘te with the male lalafel /playdead emote.

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

I saw that one GNB in the GNB storyline that held his sword like Squall, and now I want to hold it the same way, why do we have that weird stance with it on our shoulder? T^T

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Main reason is that gnbs use slightly different gunblades to squall. Squalls gunblades are all 2 handed longswords which are rather big. Our gunblades by comparison are more 1 handed blades/ 1.5 bastard sword kind of deals and are a fair deal smaller, almost like a halfway between a Seifer and a Squall gunblade. Holding our gunblades permantly in 2 hands would look a bit strange on most of the gunblades we have, like holding a knife in 2 hands sorta deal. Now holding our gunblades in the garlean style like gaius, now I'd be down for that

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Main reason is that gnbs use slightly different gunblades to squall. Squalls gunblades are all 2 handed longswords which are rather big. Our gunblades by comparison are more 1 handed blades/ 1.5 bastard sword kind of deals and are a fair deal smaller, almost like a halfway between a Seifer and a Squall gunblade. Holding our gunblades permantly in 2 hands would look a bit strange on most of the gunblades we have, like holding a knife in 2 hands sorta deal.

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Well, if our gunblades are smaller, then I propose that we hold the gunblade like Lightning full-time, and run with it out like she does too, not that horrible stiff shoulder run that we have now.

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

why do we have that weird stance with it on our shoulder? T^T

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It's based on a "wrath" stance, a real-life swordfighting technique. Similarly, the default dark knight stance is based on the "ochs" stance.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

It's based on a "wrath" stance, a real-life swordfighting technique. Similarly, the default dark knight stance is based on the "ochs" stance.

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But I'm playing a Final Fantasy game, so I kinda want to see call-backs to other Final Fantasy games :P

I feel this - I play a male au ra and despite his character being 'soft' all the emotes are edgy and it just don't fit him at all - I like the cat boi emotes, whish I could have the arms behind the head pose for my boi

And the male M'qote sitting pose that is just them crouching/perching. I want that!

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

But I'm playing a Final Fantasy game, so I kinda want to see call-backs to other Final Fantasy games :P

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Then about 80% of the game has you covered. :p

Won't argue that the running pose could use work, though. A lot of them could.

If we are on GNB pose, I want that one from the teaser cinematic is idle pose tbh. With straight back it looked very cool really. Though I'm mostly okay with what we have.

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

Well, if our gunblades are smaller, then I propose that we hold the gunblade like Lightning full-time, and run with it out like she does too, not that horrible stiff shoulder run that we have now.

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The thing I'd say about the is Lightning isn't actually a "gunblade" user, her weapon was called a dualblade in japan, and is a sword that transforms into a gun, rather than being gunblade. Then again they gave lightnings pose as and idle so who knows, might look a bit off on male chars

Just here to bump! I really like the idea of having the option to change animations! ^^

As for GNB, I actually like the animations. What truly bothers me is the alt female Paladin stance. Or rather, the fact that it was made so obviously with a visible shield in mind, unlike the male one. I use an invisible shield, and dear, does it look silly with the female alt stance.