7.1 MSQ Low Effort Crowd Scene

During one of the MSQ scenes there is a crowd with a lot of people gathered and I know this isn't some game design concept used exclusively in this game but the execution of it seems even more low effort than what any company should be doing for something that is considered the main story and not like a NFL Madden crowd.

While it makes some functional sense if the characters were zoomed out and you wouldn't really notice the details, they do it on characters that are in camera cuts that make them very noticeable.

I cannot imagine it would have taken a professional with actual dev tools too much time to just randomly create 20-30 more unique NPCs for a crowd in something important like an MSQ like this. At the very least for the ones that are actually focused on within camera cuts. Besides even just their appearance they could've even done different dyes on the clothes considering how many dye colors are available.

It is crazy to me that they went through this scene and didn't think this stood out as low quality effort when they are shown right out in the open like that.

*this probably applies to the other crowd scene originally in DT I just didn't pay attention at the time since it wasn't nearly as jarring as this time*

To be honest, I didn't notice it this patch, but the coronation scene's crowd in 7.0 was very noticeable to me. Particularly the movement, because they used the same animation cycles for characters with the same rig in the crowd, but they were all synced, so when the camera is far away, it looks weird. If they offset the motion by a bit, it would've been way less noticeable. Just a little detail that could make things look much better...

I'm not sure it's something that only started happening in Dawntrail though.

Reference images:

https://i.imgur.com/4f03l5v.png

https://i.imgur.com/xadQQ3d.png


The first one is bad cause it's not even trying to hide the fact that people are duplicated and it's not like the ones that are in the distance where you could argue it's fine cause they aren't *clearly visible* like seen here but even that is a poor choice given just how limited they went with it.


The second one is an especially bad example cause they purposefully chose that camera angle and yet it is one that ONLY shows the duplicated characters which is such a questionable decision.

The decision should've been to only show a crowd sizeable enough to show each "unique" person like the ones in the first pack of non-duplicated people OR to put forth the actual effort to make at least somewhat sizeable amount of unique NPCs.

Without going around and studying the whole area I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even use all the actual NPCs available in the zone which at least would've been premade and usable without extra work. But somehow they only went with the half-measured option which is so much worse and I don't know how anyone thought it was ok from a game design perspective.

I was bothered by that crowd, but less for the duplication of characters and more because they just... filled out a few rectangles with a uniform distribution of people. That is not how crowds work. When you go to any event, are the people going to look like they have been placed by a uniform distribution function with minor random noise? No, there would be more people in the front pressing to get a clear view, and the further back the sparser the crowd would be. And where the crowd is sparse, there would be noticeable small clusters of people who know each other standing together.

And there was a lot more wrong in that scene, but this is too early for spoilers here.

All of them are NPC meme losers equal to prawns in district 9. Most them are probably clones or something they have a birthrate problem.

Literally every game that has a huge crowd scene uses duplicate NPCs. Hell even big budget movies do this. It's hidden reasonably well. It's cool that they are even trying to show a massive scale of characters at all.

I'm not a person who gives the dev a pass on many things but this seems like a very entitled complaint. Their time would be much better spent elsewhere than appeasing nitpicking.

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Originally Posted by Amh_Wilzuun

It's hidden reasonably well.

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It's really not though... the front has a few random npc's, but then a few rows back it becomes literally the same two npc's duplicated over an over. The spacing is also incredibly obvious.. its like they're standing on a grid. It would have taken very minimal effort to make this look passable.. add a third npc into the mix, and rearange them so they're not standing orderly and spaced out. clump a few people together. that would have hidden it reasonably well.

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Originally Posted by Amh_Wilzuun

Their time would be much better spent elsewhere than appeasing nitpicking.

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I don't know about you, but immersion is very important to me, especially in rpg's and games like this. When something is so obviously artificial, it immediatly snaps me out of that world and reminds me i'm playing a video game. That's not a feeling you want as a player, and its not a feeling the devs want to give us. This isn't a nitpicking complaint... immersion is so important.

The synchronized animations (or lack thereof) and identical poses.

I just wanna point out that if they used Suits for the guys and Nier dresses(and suits are cool too?) for the ladies it would have been FAR less jarring

Its normal to have lots of people with similar formal wear at a funeral

Its not normal to wear the same selection of sports clothes to a funeral as if you were attending a sports match

Edit since people are missing the point: if you are gonna stick with the sports clothes, at least shuffle them more, randomize the dyes, make them feel like a crowd of different people

If you dont want to bother with that, stick with the time skip lf the start of the patch were Wuk literally tells you its been a while and use that as an excuse to have S9 either import or produce formal wear while you were gone

I thought the crowd shot was serviceable.

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Originally Posted by Cinno

It's really not though... the front has a few random npc's, but then a few rows back it becomes literally the same two npc's duplicated over an over. The spacing is also incredibly obvious.. its like they're standing on a grid. It would have taken very minimal effort to make this look passable.. add a third npc into the mix, and rearange them so they're not standing orderly and spaced out. clump a few people together. that would have hidden it reasonably well.



I don't know about you, but immersion is very important to me, especially in rpg's and games like this. When something is so obviously artificial, it immediatly snaps me out of that world and reminds me i'm playing a video game. That's not a feeling you want as a player, and its not a feeling the devs want to give us. This isn't a nitpicking complaint... immersion is so important.

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You are nitpicking.

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Originally Posted by Amh_Wilzuun

Literally every game that has a huge crowd scene uses duplicate NPCs. Hell even big budget movies do this. It's hidden reasonably well. It's cool that they are even trying to show a massive scale of characters at all.

I'm not a person who gives the dev a pass on many things but this seems like a very entitled complaint. Their time would be much better spent elsewhere than appeasing nitpicking.

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I think we have more important issues to worry about.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

During one of the MSQ scenes there is a crowd with a lot of people gathered and I know this isn't some game design concept used exclusively in this game but the execution of it seems even more low effort than what any company should be doing for something that is considered the main story and not like a NFL Madden crowd.

While it makes some functional sense if the characters were zoomed out and you wouldn't really notice the details, they do it on characters that are in camera cuts that make them very noticeable.

I cannot imagine it would have taken a professional with actual dev tools too much time to just randomly create 20-30 more unique NPCs for a crowd in something important like an MSQ like this. At the very least for the ones that are actually focused on within camera cuts. Besides even just their appearance they could've even done different dyes on the clothes considering how many dye colors are available.

It is crazy to me that they went through this scene and didn't think this stood out as low quality effort when they are shown right out in the open like that.

*this probably applies to the other crowd scene originally in DT I just didn't pay attention at the time since it wasn't nearly as jarring as this time*

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https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...550&height=225

It's become so popular to hate on Dawntrail that people will look onto the smallest, most banal things in order to get outraged and whine.

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Originally Posted by Raraka

I just wanna point out that if they used Suits for the guys and Nier dresses(and suits are cool too?) for the ladies it would have been FAR less jarring

Its normal to have lots of people with similar formal wear at a funeral

Its not normal to wear the same selection of sports clothes to a funeral as if you were attending a sports match

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It's literally said in the game that they don't know what a funeral is, because they've been erasing the memories of the dead for so long that they had to ask Oblivion to look up how to actually mourn. They don't have formal clothes for something they've never had to actually DO.

I... didn't even notice this. Who's focusing on the background NPCs in a scene like this?

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

It's literally said in the game that they don't know what a funeral is, because they've been erasing the memories of the dead for so long that they had to ask Oblivion to look up how to actually mourn. They don't have formal clothes for something they've never had to actually DO.

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Now now, you can't expect people to read dialogue in this game. That's asking way too much.

I think you have to remember that these scenes have to not make a PS4 chug, so they pretty much did the best they could, having too many different outfits on top of having to load in so many npcs probably makes the game chug or significantly increases load times knowing the game's spaghetti code

it's not even about the outfits at this point, its that they are literally the same characters. same faces, same hair.

and it's not 'characters in the background' when it does a panning zoom out over all of them and shows them all, alternating clones, standing in a grid formation. its not natural.

I actually havent been one of the haters of dawntrail. Not my favorite expansion but its been fine, i dont even dislike wuk lamat. But this scene was incredibly jarring and immersion breaking.

Regarding their outfits, remember that the last time these peoples' civilization had a funeral was almost 500 years ago. They have no idea what to wear, they barely know what's going on. The only person in S9 we see wearing a suit is the Arcadion announcer and he's a character playing a character.

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

Regarding their outfits, remember that the last time these peoples' civilization had a funeral was almost 500 years ago. They have no idea what to wear, they barely know what's going on. The only person in S9 we see wearing a suit is the Arcadion announcer and he's a character playing a character.

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This, and even if they do know what to wear, unless they already had similar enough clothes, they very likely couldn't get it in time, remember the MSQ also mentions they are struggling to paint enough of their little Autorezzers black in time, if they are struggling with the manpower to do something as small as that, I imagine they would struggle to get enough clothes in a style that isn't commonly worn in time.

Funny how they have various fashions for solution 9 and choose those to duplicate.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

It's become so popular to hate on Dawntrail that people will look onto the smallest, most banal things in order to get outraged and whine.

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If you're paying $156/yr to play a video game, people are going to expect effort.

FFXIV is SE's cashcow. Be nice to see some of the money I put into the game go into giving us quality content. Idk why y'all pretend low effort isn't going to drive people away. Dawntrail's 7.0 playercount should've been evidence enough.

Meanwhile, Warframe costs $0/yr to play and there's actually things to do in there.

"tHeN gO pLaY wArFrAme"

Yeah, I think I will.

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Originally Posted by iVolke

If you're paying $156/yr to play a video game, people are going to expect effort.

FFXIV is SE's cashcow. Be nice to see some of the money I put into the game go into giving us quality content. Idk why y'all pretend low effort isn't going to drive people away. Dawntrail's 7.0 playercount should've been evidence enough.

Meanwhile, Warframe costs $0/yr to play and there's actually things to do in there.

"tHeN gO pLaY wArFrAme"

Yeah, I think I will.

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If I'm paying $156 a year then I don't want to waste their time on stupid stuff like making giant crowd scenes immune to nitpicking