Letter from the Producer LXII

[HyoMinPark]

I'm sure people would. It's easy to appeal to what the general forumgoer wants, but I'm wondering if there might be some Dev testing reason we don't have it. It'd be nice to hear the nitty gritties of it. THough I'm sure someone would respond with a "but in *game* they.. " or "modders have.. " which are points.. but it's still arguing with the person running the ride and asking them to break their own rule. I AM curious what exactly this causes.. but I've seen enough famous silly bugs to know that sometimes devs make choices like that for pretty good reasons.

The developers have given their reasoning/"quality standard" for why we can't have proper feet (i.e., we'll float). It gets immediately invalidated because it already exists despite having improper feet. That's probably why so many people are saying now that it's not done simply out of "we don't wanna" versus a legitimate reason.

[Melichoir]

The developers have given their reasoning/"quality standard" for why we can't have proper feet (i.e., we'll float). It gets immediately invalidated because it already exists despite having improper feet. That's probably why so many people are saying now that it's not done simply out of "we don't wanna" versus a legitimate reason.

Im not aware of any standard character model in the game which stands barefoot on ground.

[HyoMinPark]

Im not aware of any standard character model in the game which stands barefoot on ground.

Because they force us all to have perma-sandals - NPCs included. Their reasoning is “We can’t let everyone walk around bare foot because they would float”....meanwhile, I could go to any area and find a spot where I float in my horrible sandals. Hence why I say their reasoning goes out the window. I find the excuse flimsy, personally.

[Vahlnir]

Because they force us all to have perma-sandals - NPCs included. Their reasoning is “We can’t let everyone walk around bare foot because they would float”....meanwhile, I could go to any area and find a spot where I float in my horrible sandals. Hence why I say their reasoning goes out the window. I find the excuse flimsy, personally.

It really comes down to "we don't wanna do it because workload". I guess I can understand with there being a lot more pressing matters to attend to, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

[Melichoir]

Because they force us all to have perma-sandals - NPCs included. Their reasoning is “We can’t let everyone walk around bare foot because they would float”....meanwhile, I could go to any area and find a spot where I float in my horrible sandals. Hence why I say their reasoning goes out the window. I find the excuse flimsy, personally.

I dont think it's a horrible excuse so much as a poorly explained one...

While Im not 100% sure on this, the base model of all NPCs were designed with sandals. That makes the bottom of the sandals the 'bottom of the model'. So on a ground plane, thats where the model meets the ground. If they remove the sandals geometry, the model would not 'sink' down to meet the ground unless they adjust all the models to do this. This gets complicated because if the model 'sinks' down to meet the ground when naked, they would have to 'elevate' when boots are equipped because they have soles. This may affect animations, camera placements in cutscenes, and etc where currently the player hieght doesnt adjust based on gear. It remains static. I mean they could fix this by making the character model's feet thicker so nothing changes, but youre gonna notice that your character's height wont alter to compensate for soles when you stick on boots. Im not sure how big a deal that is to players.

As for floating in other spots, its noticeable when teh ground plane has texture that goes down, but the character remains on an invisible plane that is level. Susano's arena has this issue, as an example. That's just a design aspect that's never really been fixed generally in games because it can cause a lot of problems with collision.

[HyoMinPark]

I dont think it's a horrible excuse so much as a poorly explained one...

While Im not 100% sure on this, the base model of all NPCs were designed with sandals. That makes the bottom of the sandals the 'bottom of the model'. So on a ground plane, thats where the model meets the ground. If they remove the sandals geometry, the model would not 'sink' down to meet the ground unless they adjust all the models to do this. This gets complicated because if the model 'sinks' down to meet the ground when naked, they would have to 'elevate' when boots are equipped because they have soles. This may affect animations, camera placements in cutscenes, and etc where currently the player hieght doesnt adjust based on gear. It remains static. I mean they could fix this by making the character model's feet thicker so nothing changes, but youre gonna notice that your character's height wont alter to compensate for soles when you stick on boots. Im not sure how big a deal that is to players.

As for floating in other spots, its noticeable when teh ground plane has texture that goes down, but the character remains on an invisible plane that is level. Susano's arena has this issue, as an example. That's just a design aspect that's never really been fixed generally in games because it can cause a lot of problems with collision.

The feet mods that current exist take care of your concern by stretching the ankle and the sole of the feet just slightly to make up for the incline that the sandals give us. As feet are replaced entirely with the models for things like footwear, it would not have that much of an effect on things.

[Gula]

It really comes down to "we don't wanna do it because workload". I guess I can understand with there being a lot more pressing matters to attend to, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Have you shadowed an employee for a work week to be absolutely sure of this though?

[Vahlnir]

Have you shadowed an employee for a work week to be absolutely sure of this though?

Not really sure if that matters or not. We've been told they don't want to do things because it'd be a lot of work. This is one of those things.

[Melichoir]

The feet mods that current exist take care of your concern by stretching the ankle and the sole of the feet just slightly to make up for the incline that the sandals give us. As feet are replaced entirely with the models for things like footwear, it would not have that much of an effect on things.

Yeah, I figured that would be teh solution, but my point is that comes with a similar drawback - Your character model wont shift in height when it logically should when you put on shoes. At that point, though, its a matter of how game breaking that immersion gets. Which then gets into similar arguments, like clipping. If one aspect is potentially immersion breaking but acted upon, why not more? Why not have long hair styles even if they clip armor/bodies/geometry. Im not arguing that Yoshi is right or wrong, but that the issue isnt so black and white I guess and theres more to these problems than the initial issue.

[HyoMinPark]

Yeah, I figured that would be teh solution, but my point is that comes with a similar drawback - Your character model wont shift in height when it logically should when you put on shoes. At that point, though, its a matter of how game breaking that immersion gets. Which then gets into similar arguments, like clipping. If one aspect is potentially immersion breaking but acted upon, why not more? Why not have long hair styles even if they clip armor/bodies/geometry. Im not arguing that Yoshi is right or wrong, but that the issue isnt so black and white I guess and theres more to these problems than the initial issue.

It already doesn’t shift in character height. If you have a female character, try on Y’shtola’s HW attire boots. Despite having a platform heel, your character remains the same height because the footwear replaces the feet (and sometimes the leg) model entirely. This also applies to every other piece of gear: look at the Word of the Mother dress. Even if your character is at the lower end of the bust slider spectrum, when you put it on, it automatically gives you her breast size. Because it replaces your character’s body model with that of hers. Some pieces do better jobs at reflecting different bust sizes, but others have fairly static models that make you look either larger than you are or flatter than you are.

As for clipping, look at characters like Lyse and Yotsuyu in their respective, tailor made hair and outfits. They still clip. Everything clips, and the devs have said that they can’t do anything about it and don’t care to.