[Future Update Request] Personality Customization

[LucisXIX]

I have an idea i’d like to pitch to the dev team for a future update. I’m not sure if anyone else has mentioned this before, I may be wrong. But nonetheless, I’d like to get you guys’ opinion on it, as well.

It’s probably been brought up as part of the bigger conversation about updated character customization, but I would absolutely love for that aspect to be expanded upon and allow for the player to change different animations depending on how they would like to portray their character and that character’s gender performance.

To put it simply; I believe players should be allowed to carve out their character’s personality using both clothing AND in-game animations.

For example; someone has an idea for a character that they would like to execute. But, the default animations for the character’s chosen race don’t exactly fit the vision this person has in mind.
The perfect remedy for this, in my opinion, would be to allow players to pick a ‘Personality Type’ for their character, and assign either masculine or feminine touches to the kinds of quirks and mannerisms that accompany said personality.

Starting small, the player would choose between the 4 main emotions portrayed within the game as the baseline for their personality type :
- Happiness (called ‘Upbeat’)
- Sadness (called ‘Withdrawn’)
- Anger (called ‘Aggressive’)
- Neutral (called ‘Focused’)

*Sidenote: I also think that there should be personality types that can be unlocked by playing as specific jobs/classes (i.e. Sage unlocking an ‘Academic’ personality, Red Mage unlocking a ‘Dutiful’ personality, Samurai unlocking a ‘Refined’ personality, etc.)

And using that as a baseline, the player can then choose what lens they would like the character’s personality to be viewed from, be it a masculine or feminine one.
This feature, along with the sprawling variety of jobs/classes within the game, would be a great way of attracting new players, while also giving veteran players something to be excited about.

Knowing that the dev team is working towards de-gendering the clothing in the game gives me hope for this to be implemented in the game at some point in the future.

It breathes life into FFXIV and it’s also a great way of giving players a wider range of creativity without having to give the developers the added stress of creating all new assets, unless they feel it necessary.

How do you guys feel about the idea? Feel free to let me know in the comments! If you have anything you think would be a great addition to the idea, I’d love to hear it!

[Tsiron]

People got up in arms about "diluting the races (further, since they're already basically mostly just humans with extra bits)" by allowing us to swap animations when I suggested it forever ago, but no yeah I would love this, personally

[GrizzlyTank]

All they'd have to do is let us make expressions persist.

[Calysto]

Yes ; I'll also take "Annoyed" as priority, WoL got other things to do than deliver lunches

And Yes to persistent 'facial emotes' ; I already suggested something in that sense about ears (notably Vierra's 'bone' ears that are too rigid being tied to the model)

[LucisXIX]

“diluting the races” is absolutely insane LMAO
I just think that people would appreciate being able to give their WOLs more expressive motions and what-not, nothing too crazy

The clothes are just the first step imo

[OgruMogru]

All they'd have to do is let us make face emotes persist.

I wanna perma /smug I needa perma /smug

[Liamont]

+1 to this idea. And also the allowing face emotes to persist.

[Ath192]

Too many people would troll with persistent expressions. I dont wanna see a Lala with a constant wow face just looking like an idiot 24/7.

Thancred: Beautiful day huh?
WoL: O=

That being said I wouldn’t mind a set of: confident/calm/shy animation defaults you can choose from.

[Atelier-Bagur]

The whole personality customization from ESO really opened my eyes to what could be customized with our characters since I never thought about having unique idle animations and expressions.

Yes, I would love to be able to have this be a feature in FFXIV

[Renato]

I love this idea. PSO2 sort if has this where you can choose different idle animations, running animations, etc. It definitely adds to making your character your own and I would also love to see this in FFXIV.

But, I don't see this happening ever. I've been playing for a long time now. One of the things we've been asking for for years is the ability to glam other job gear outside of AF stuff. For years Yoshi has come up with excuse after excuse as to why we could never do it. Things like, "people wouldn't be able to tell which job is which" or "we would like to keep job identity unique."

If their stance on race identity is anything like it is for glam, this is just wishful thinking unfortunately. Even though, I and many others think this is a great idea. Yoshi and his team are stubborn af.