Alternate Animations

In the past, several actions have been cut from the playable jobs- moves that were part of tank aggro combos, PvP-specific actions, AoE sequences that got reworked, or even simply moves that are replaced as part of the leveling process, like Rage of Halone, any of the White Mage spells before they got Glare, and the list goes on and on.

What if there was a separate tab in the Actions and Traits menu that gave you alternate versions of existing moves that are functionally identical but use different animations?

I.E., under the tab you could find a move which behaves functionally identically to Souleater, but has the animation from Power Slash, so that you could put it onto your hotbar and play DRK the exact same way but now your combo ender animates differently.

The system's easily expanded to include any spells that get a replacement while leveling, as well as potential for some specific unlocks that could be awarded via achievements or what have you- these 'ability skins' could be given as rewards for doing high-end content or unlocked via one of the game's existing currencies. Could you get Omega-M's mechanical light-beam looking Passage of Arms via doing O12S? What about a more Suzaku-inspired Rising Phoenix? Or if you wanted to simply hit a checkmark to move it back to Flint Strike, that'd be fine too.

Thoughts?

This is something I'm sure the majority of people, myself included would like to see happen, especially replacing Soul Eater with Power Slash.

One thing that needs to be mentioned though, is that not all action upgrades keep the same AoE. 2 that come to mind immediately as an issue is Fuga > Fuko, which is a cone > circle and Spirit's Within > Expiacion which is Single Target > AoE. Of course, the 3 Summon II commands could also prove an issue, however, you just have the egi/carbuncle summon, do an animation and keep the Summon II effects, so that one is easily fixed.

Yeah, I don't think it would necessarily work for every action in the game- as much as I'm sure Dragoons, for instance, want their pole dancing back, their AoE is a line now, so I'm not sure if that'd convey the same way. But certainly they'd be able to get away with a lot of it, and give us some of the older stuff back, or even things like PvP action animations. It'd be nice as a white mage to go back to casting Aero and Stone 4 or whatever.

I'd love the option to have verthunder and veraero animations at 90, looks more satisfying to launch a crackling fat beam of lightning at opponents instead of that weird spinny crystal thing that replaces it.

Likewise I think fire III looks better than IV, and I like earlier versions of broil. I'd even pay good gil if it came in the shape of craftable cosmetic items or something.

When they revealed the new UI for the action menu, I thought it was an Animation Glamour UI, but alas. Honestly a missed oppertunity from SE, folks are out there making money off of animation glamour mods and SE just doesnt provide a native option.

I'd love to have that.
I want to throw massives stones instead of having some weird little sparkles and twinkles with a cast animation that looks like I'm a ragdoll dangling its lower body around. I'll also take the old Gravity animation over new, 3 spinny balls don't do it for me.

Sounds like modding but with extra steps from the devs involved. While I would love to be able to change visual effects of attacks, I really REALLY doubt such a small indie company would step up and do it.

I think it would be really great to be able to personalised our moveset.
Being able to change to color of the texture as well, i've seen a ton of dark knight with angelic or paladin glamour. It would be great if they could change the VFX color.

But considering Square excuse for not letting us glamour any gear we want, i think they would hold the same position for letting us have differents animations.
They'll probably say it could confuse new players or ruin class identity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RukoBoshi

I think it would be really great to be able to personalised our moveset.
Being able to change to color of the texture as well, i've seen a ton of dark knight with angelic or paladin glamour. It would be great if they could change the VFX color.

But considering Square excuse for not letting us glamour any gear we want, i think they would hold the same position for letting us have differents animations.
They'll probably say it could confuse new players or ruin class identity.

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That could be easily fixed by having to do some endgame questline to unlock the option. That should solve new player confusion (and tell more easily who bought a skip xD)

I think something like "Action Glamours" could be an amazing feature to add in the next expansion. A good way to bring back classic animations (that are still in the game as NPCs use them), as well as a way to streamline stuff like Egi-Glamour and the scholar's fairies. It would be a good way to add new and original animations or graphics, which would sell really well with RPers or really anyone with an aesthetic idea of their character. It's clear glamour, mounts, and other aesthetic pursuits, are massively important to the playerbase, so I think a system like this would be the perfect match.

Wanted to circle back to this topic to bump it back up and see how good of an idea it'd be to introduce not only 'lost' animations like those from previous incarnations of the job (power slash, butcher's block, etc) and those that you level out of (verthunder 1 was brought up previously), but also a wider variety of weaponskill 'skins' from completing various content.

The Adventurer Plate backgrounds and trimmings you get for completing the ultimate fights put the idea back in my head, and while I don't know how extravagant of an idea it would be to give SMNs who've cleared UCoB the ability to summon golden Bahamut, I think it'd be a fun thing to do to bring in some unique flavor from different past content, like the raid tiers or primal fights, and it'd be similarly neat to get a couple different flavors of Limit Break to be able to use too.

Certainly I'm mostly just for more self-expression, and whether that means White mage being able to cast Aero/Stone again to Machinist getting alternate takes on some of their tools to even reskinning some spells akin to Blue Mage's learned abilities I think it'd be a sick thing to add.

What kinds of alternate animations would you want to see be made available?