The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Archwizard]

I was referring to only flight formations and energy modes for the gundam nouliths, after all.

The other thing is (speaking as someone with some animation experience myself) that in order to have the diversity of noulith formations you describe, they would either have to animate each of the four as individual weapons with their own skeletons, or continue as one set but with several times more weapon animations than any other weapon just to account for the number of formations you're looking for. As already one of the most complex weapon types in the game, it'd make nouliths far and away the most overloaded and laggy weapon to boot.

But I also don't quite understand, practically, how programmable flight formations would work/benefit the job? It's a nice descriptor on paper but it really depends how much it actually adds to the job besides micromanagement.
I get that they're inspired by Gundam bits, but it's not like they're in danger of getting shot down if they don't perform evasive maneuvers, or need to bypass obstacles on the way to their target (and in the extremely rare cases where that mattered, like having to shoot from a particular angle at all times to bypass a reflective barrier, it might be imbalanced if the SGE was the one job that could ignore the mechanic). Nor do we have a sword or handheld gun as a backup weapon while they're deployed; they're the only extension of our arms, which is why they only fly for a second and come right back, as we'd otherwise disarm ourselves for extended periods (and prevent the charging of healing abilities to boot).
I could see things like "have two of them channel a barrier in front of you while the other two fire over it like an emplacement" or something like that, but even then the multitasking nature of SGE abilities means you could just have that as one "pre-programmed" spell... in the case you could ever justify us needing that capability. Anything more complex than that, there are probably simpler alternatives for.

And this is all ignoring the lore implications to boot, where the first thing you learn as a SGE is that the four adderstones/nouliths create one circuit for spells... so all flight formations would have to be in predetermined isometric shapes anyway.

At least in the case of SCH, the faerie acts independently of you and you can keep casting while it's deployed, so ordering it around to do one thing while you do something else at the same time makes sense so that you two have to work in synergy with each other, and is additive in just having actions to dictate the faerie's behaviors at a distance.
So it really feels like SCH is much more capable of accomplishing what you want out of SGE, in a practical manner.

[Shurrikhan]

it'd make nouliths far and away the most overloaded and laggy weapon to boot.

I've... yet to see a frame drop just due to a physical animation, or for an animation to stutter over load. And I've mostly played on a laptop. Particle effects, sure. But the actual physics, such as when particle effects are culled via the graphics options? Have not seen that.

So, simply put, I don't think I'll be considering that a constraint worth worrying about.

But I also don't quite understand, practically, how programmable flight formations would work/benefit the job? It's a nice descriptor on paper but it really depends how much it actually adds to the job besides micromanagement.

And this is all ignoring the lore implications to boot, where the first thing you learn as a SGE is that the four adderstones/nouliths create one circuit for spells... so all flight formations would have to be in predetermined isometric shapes anyway.

If the lore tells you a Soulcaliber-style blade-whip can't actually be used as anything like a whip (instead of just a sword that can curve a bit more and grab onto enemies a bit between its blade-plates), you dispense with the lore, not the obviously available functionality of the blade-whip.

Personally, I'd like to see Sage as actually being able to go in, from time to time, and kind of wreck shit. Allowing nouliths to be oriented in more than just a pyramidal formation with one's mis-torso palm thrusts at the center would be vital to a lot of those prospects.

With that, you might have them... funnel energy into you from behind, chain into one another into a sort of lance in order to empower a physical attack [via a launched noulith] for stunning purposes (where a mere beam would not suffice), carry off each other's momentum into a sort of cleave or additionally physically-based shield (using the sides of the nouliths, say, with exhaustible/rechargeable fortification runes), use short persistent beams that could uniquely impel and siphon simultaneously (but are limited to functioning temporarily as short-swords), or even stack them close, touching each other, for an extremely dense but small shield (e.g., single-strike miti).

While that would shift Sage's former identity from being just a backliner with a fancy 4-part staff, instead letting it extend into anything that would seemingly make use of those varied shapes, I wouldn't mind that. I'd prefer whatever tool it picks be the primary organizer of its kit, even if subtly constrained atop that by intended vibe.

To spitball something slightly more concrete, let's say that you have two basic phasic modes (essentially, inflow/drain and outflow/release), two overlying modes (impulsive and stabilizing), and a variety of commands that perform a dynamic action in themselves and set up a given formation of your nouliths. You have an energy gauge separated among 5 cylinders, one larger one in the center (your own), and 1 for each of the nouliths. The lower their energy, the more they can drain (inflow). The higher their energy, the more they can release (outflow).

As a creative exercise, let's imagine that's basically where it ends. A dozen or so buttons across two switches, a handful of dynamic actions, a power release (2-charge CD or whatnot) and/or maybe a noulith overload or full burst command (temporarily puts noulith out of commission if its energy isn't sufficiently high/low, though with certain added advantages from that crossover atop the burst throughput itself), and a few specials. Total actions actually possible, on the other hand... maybe 30-50.

If you want a mock-up beyond that, I can come back to this in a few days when work has calmed down.

For now, I'll just leave that...

• The means by which a job forms its given capacities (its "micromanagement") ARE what makes a job feel like that job; else we could simply modulate auto-attacks for a given burst window length and height and given cleave formula and that'd already provide a unique throughput profile (which, without building out of the different means of interaction is all that could differentiate jobs beyond a couple of arbitrary and unrelated utility --or variants on bog-standards-- that'd just be slapped on after).
  
  
• No, SCH would not be more capable of accomplishing what I want out of SGE, in a practical manner or otherwise.

[Archwizard]

I've... yet to see a frame drop just due to a physical animation, or for an animation to stutter over load. And I've mostly played on a laptop. Particle effects, sure. But the actual physics, such as when particle effects are culled via the graphics options? Have not seen that.

That's not what I mean. The individual casts aren't going to be the sources of lag, barring particle effect calls.
A character's entire animation moveset must be loaded into an area at once in anticipation of that character's actions, and each moveset has different file sizes which means different server load. Now while I'm not looking at 14's back end, I assume that part of the "change jobs with weapon swap" element of the game is calling different available movesets so that only the relevant/active one is loaded by the game while in use (a tricky advantage of being locked into a job while instanced) in order to reduce this server strain; it's also why there's a slight delay every time you swap weapons.
If the nouliths themselves have four separate movesets in order for each one to be separately programmable, then the presence of a Sage in the party is 5 entities on the field, each with its own moveset, which is a significant multiplier on server strain compared to most jobs that are only two or three.
If all four nouliths share only one moveset, then that's only two entities as with most other jobs, but it's a significantly larger moveset to account for more possible variations of each individual action, which might cause problems loading the individual entities throughout their presence on the battlefield.

Which is why a limited number of pre-programmed actions is much more plausible than 4*(2^x) animations where x is multipliers on formations.

[Shurrikhan]

A character's entire animation moveset must be loaded into an area at once in anticipation of that character's actions, and each moveset has different file sizes which means different server load.

Why would the animations not simply be stored client-side?

(a tricky advantage of being locked into a job while instanced)

But not all instances lock you into a job, nor does the open world. I can cycle every animation on one job, immediately swap to another, cycle all its animations, etc. And there are far, far more animations going off at once around an S-rank than in any dungeon, despite job-swaps being possible at any time in that more burdened setting.

The fact that modders can swap any animation to any animation, including from collected parts of multiple other animations, likewise seems to hint that every animation possible within the entire game is always available to every client.

If the nouliths themselves have four separate movesets in order for each one to be separately programmable, then the presence of a Sage in the party is 5 entities on the field, each with its own moveset, which is a significant multiplier on server strain compared to most jobs that are only two or three.

Maybe, but I've not asked for that. I just want them to have more than a single idle position and for their part within spells to be, well, more than just the spell animations themselves. A degree of dynamism that gives them at least the pretense of actually functioning how they look like they should be able to function. And then to build out the toolkit from there, that weapon of choice and all that would seem feasible thereto that could be put to significantly entertaining and cohesive use.

[ForsakenRoe]

Maybe, but I've not asked for that. I just want them to have more than a single idle position and for their part within spells to be, well, more than just the spell animations themselves. A degree of dynamism that gives them at least the pretense of actually functioning how they look like they should be able to function. And then to build out the toolkit from there, that weapon of choice and all that would seem feasible thereto that could be put to significantly entertaining and cohesive use.

IDK about all the animation mumbo jumbo you ask for, but I could definitely envision a job gauge where you have to keep all 4 Nouliths balanced, keep them powered enough to function but don't let them overheat sort of thing. These 'Formations' sound like different amplification effects though, like Eukrasia Formation changes skills to apply shields instead of direct healing, or Zoe Formation amplifies the potency of both damage and healing skills, but puts strain on the Noulith and starts to overheat it (reminds me of the Pyretic Booster from the G-Warrior instance), so you'd have to swap to a different Formation to allow for it to aggressively vent that heat before it gets too hot and has to cool down. Unfortunately though, in practice that would probably end up working like Gauss Barrel from SB, except you have 4 guns to worry about the gauges of (and they're all on seperate gauges too). Maybe if it were a DPS it'd be more likely, but SE'd probably say 'well what if the SGE overheats their Noulith and now they cant heal, we cant have that so no this wont work'.