Patch 3.4 - Soul Surrender

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Looking at the WoD screenshot, it does look like its in (or near) the Bowl of Embers. Which does bring up the implications of them (or us) fighting Ifrit again.

I still think whatever fight we have with them this time is one we're going to lose; a 5v1 fight where we try to hold out until help arrives, but we fail and *something* happens to us (capture, corruption...not death, Elidibus won't allow that to happen)

Or a 3rd party stops the fight. Or better, the fight stops when their HP hits a certain percentage (kind of like how the fight against Gaius in the elevator stops when his HP reaches 20%) and the plot takes over. If we DO suffer any form of a loss, the most I see happening is immobilization.

[PArcher]

Or a 3rd party stops the fight. Or better, the fight stops when their HP hits a certain percentage (kind of like how the fight against Gaius in the elevator stops when his HP reaches 20%) and the plot takes over. If we DO suffer any form of a loss, the most I see happening is immobilization.

Well, that's what would happen. We fight but no matter what job we are, our HP just keeps getting sapped (one of them constantly puts an infirmary debuff on us to stop healing, others deal enough damage to stop tank CDs or place the Amnesia debuff on us and so on) and at a certain HP% it stops and the story plays out.

[Cilia]

@Cilia:
Interesting analogy. I actually began replaying Devil May Cry very recently. I'm a Vergil fanboy, admittedly, mostly because I find him much more interesting than Dante and his cockiness. Though I do think this game is sorely in need of allowing our rivals/enemies to win from time to time and stick around in the background for quite some time.

I mean...they didn't kill off Rufus after FF7 because he was so memorable/popular. He also never really 'lost' against the protagonists either - he withdrew during the only direct battle featuring him and his silver tongue/allies got him out of trouble during other opportunities. Plus he wasn't without redeeming qualities either and was pragmatic enough to not go 'all the way' with the destruction of the planet...unlike Sephiroth.

What a coincidence, I happen to prefer Vergil over Dante too (not like that). Dante's brash cockiness is entertaining, but I feel Vergil is loads more interesting as a character since he's rather ambiguous in a world that's normally very black and white.

While Rufus has his good points, it should not be forgot that his self-professed philosophy was to rule through fear. He also uses the party as scapegoats for Meteor's appearance and tries to execute them on worldwide television... among other not-so-nice things. He gets better in subsequent installments of the VII world, but in the original game he's far from likable (in my opinion).

FFXIV could pull [the WoL fighting in cutscenes] off with the number of Jobs we have, if they wanted to add one or two "stock" attacks for each job to be used in cutscenes. Or they could simply try any of the budget saving techniques used in most TV anime and combine some of our standard animations with clever framing to prevent having to show direct contact. Almost every Job at this point has some sort of casting animation or otherwise-indirect means of attacking that could be used in cutscenes for dramatic effect with very little extra work.

While I'd love to see that, I don't see it happening. There's a big "what the hell do we do for magic classes?!" that remains unresolved; an AST star globe isn't exactly suited to dealing with Darklander's Bravura Atma. (The magic classes in ToR at least had weapons, even if they were mostly for show outside of cutscenes.) Even taking that out of account, weapon ranges are vastly different (MNK has point-blank only, MCH/BRD has long-range only, etc.) and how those weapons interact with our opponents needs to be taken into account.

I feel there's just too many variables to allow this to happen without animating a different scene for each class, which would just be too much work. Again, I'd love to see it (getting to bash Darklander's smug prick face in with my Guillotine of the Tyrant, in a cutscene, would be beyond satisfying) but at present the best I expect is to have our weapon drawn in a battle stance, showing we were fighting them a moment ago.

*flame retardant armor on*

[Nalien]

I'd say stick with what we have in the MSQ... Let the Scions have cinematic fights, while we get actual fights in the form of instanced trials... I loved the Grand Melee and our fight with Regula for that... Perhaps our final encounter with Derplander can function a bit more like that, with some Praetorium mixed in; Lets say you go in against all of them with all our Scion buddies. We get them down to a certain %, then a cutscene triggers, perhaps Blanhaerz and Y'shtola get an involved cutscene that takes them out of the fight proper, and we carry on with them removed, then that continues until it's just us against Derplander, with the final blow knocking him back in a cutscene similar to what we saw with Gaius. Would we be involved much in those epic cutscenes? No, not at all... I don't think we need to be though...

Actually, thinking about it... The Anima quests could be perfect for a more involved fight scene... You're locked to a specific weapon for it, so all the animations can be tied to that... Would likely involve giving us some actual unique content for the upgrade process, but I've been arguing for that since forever... Tired of these lifeless grinds, I want something akin to the Balrahn fight in XI... Can easily have something more than; "Beat trial, cut to cutscene, big bad gets knocked back" with something like that... You could have White Mages throwing out Stone II against the big bad, while Dragoons could use some Jumps... Could even have the Anima itself get involved (assuming we're not fighting the Anima) and just make a really interesting set of cutscenes...

[Fenral]

While I'd love to see that, I don't see it happening.

Casters are actually easier. Flashy charge animation -> cut to spell activation. No two things ever need to be shown making contact. For physical attacks, you can do an enemy's PoV shot of the WoL attacking -> the expected "enemy knocked back" shot. All this can be done with existing attack animations, and without the exponential increase in complexity caused by having both the WoL and their target in the frame at the same time. Making the shot as short as possible (<1 second) will also help preserve the illusion. It's classic lazy storyboarding, but I'm was never talking full Tetsuya Nomura fight choreography or anything, just pointing out a way of solving the "awkwardly standing around" problem.

Scripted fights are still better, because as a rule you don't want to show the player doing things they could be doing in gameplay.

[Khalithar]

How did SWTOR do it? Was there some weapon or something that was common across all classes or did they just manually animate it?

They manually animated it and gave you awesome cutscenes. Here is the sith warrior vs one of the bosses, you do a combination of fighting in cutscenes and fighting in gameplay:

The player character in this is the character with the white lightsaber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi1qy2yQ16M

Same battle cutscene but as a class with a pistol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KwLyypzwsQ&t=14m41s

We need more stuff like this and less of our character standing there while the NPC's have all the fun.

[Toranja]

1. Hydaelyn cannot be a Primal. Remember, Primals feast off the aether in land. Were Hydaelyn a Primal, our Planet would be one dry husk. Also, who would be summoning her?

2. I would like to believe that Xephlatol will still be an area in 4.0. We already know much about this region, so it would be too great of a shame to instance it only. But yes, I would understand why it would be instance, given our Ixali relations.

3. It is a safe bet that a library is already being set-up in Idyllshire.

4. My best guess is that the title Soul Surrender applies to the Warriors of Darkness. They have always struck me has Warriors of Light who have failed.

[Nestama]

4. My best guess is that the title Soul Surrender applies to the Warriors of Darkness. They have always struck me has Warriors of Light who have failed.

I doubt this. The Warriors of Darkness exist because the Warrior of Light is currently an imbalance (or so Elidibus claims).

[Morningstar1337]

I doubt this. The Warriors of Darkness exist because the Warrior of Light is currently an imbalance (or so Elidibus claims).

And how do you explain that echo vision then?

[PArcher]

4. My best guess is that the title Soul Surrender applies to the Warriors of Darkness. They have always struck me has Warriors of Light who have failed.

I don't know if "failed" is the right word here.

Its possible they succeeded in stopping the Calamity they set out to...but success brought about a different set of problems that brought about another Calamity and drove them to Elidibus.

(yeah, its more likely they failed to stop the Calamity they were trying to and their reflection was destroyed then and there, and Elidibus saved them...but we don't know for sure yet.)