Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[Nemy]

Same reason people look at character models and animations before gameplay in this generation.

Personally i'd rather have an amazing experience with how a character looks and moves through a well designed world, than worry about how exactly i'm going to kill x wolves to get to x level, to get x weapon.

MMO's have been the same in terms of almost anything really, except the experience and the feel of your character being in a fantasy world.

I don't play FFXIV to experience the oh so awesome way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs. I play it for the amazing world and character design, the animation, the music, the aesthetics.

[Elexia]

That's why I played XI, it had the attention to design and detail pretty much no other MMO has done back in 2002-2007 era, even now few MMOs pay attention to small world design detail.

[Alderton]

Personally i'd rather have an amazing experience with how a character looks and moves through a well designed world, than worry about how exactly i'm going to kill x wolves to get to x level, to get x weapon.

MMO's have been the same in terms of almost anything really, except the experience and the feel of your character being in a fantasy world.

I don't play FFXIV to experience the oh so awesome way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs. I play it for the amazing world and character design, the animation, the music, the aesthetics.

Quoting this in rebuttal to your statement about my limited definition of gameplay, as this proves my point more. The various definitions of gameplay out there generally talk about how the player interacts with the environment, how the game is interacted with in regards to the game rules, and will occasionally encompass more of the elements that separate the game from any form of non-interactive media. The things you listed are all characteristics of media, both interactive and non.

Heck, my five-second google found a few places basically using gameplay and game-mechanics as synonyms. This movement change is not one of them.

I'm not trying to knock what you find interesting in the game, and if this is something you'll miss, I'm sorry to hear it is going. I don't really care either way, though. But as someone who loves to argue semantics, please know that this has nothing to do with gameplay.

[Orophin]

I don't play FFXIV to experience the oh so awesome way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs. I play it for the amazing world and character design, the animation, the music, the aesthetics.

Hate to say, but you're probably in the minority here. Most of the complaints about this game since day 1 has been how sluggish and unresponsive it is. If they have to change the way character movements look in order to make combat more fluid and responsive, so be it.

Just want to add, the things you mentioned above matter to me as well, but I also don't feel I should die to some environmental effect because my character is locked into a 5 second animation and I have no control of getting out of it.

[Nemy]

What part of Animations actually affect gameplay? 1.0 was the only exception to this rule because Animation Lock was an enforced gameplay mechanic to help make up for the server latency. In ARR they're removing Animation Lock so even IF they made all the movements aesthetically pleasing and smooth you would constantly be canceling your animations from WS spams, running side to side to combo, and using JA's, so there wouldn't be a smooth transition unless they re-implemented Animation Lock.

The only thing Animations actually do to affect gameplay is potentially blogging down your graphics card trying to make the game aesthetically eye catching and appealing, which can be a bad thing on lower end Video Cards when your trying to compensate smooth transitional elements for 50+ people in a little area like Ul'dah.

I didn't say affect, i said they are part of the gameplay.

What i perceive as gameplay, includes movement animation. We just have different definitions of gameplay.

As for blogging down the graphics card, here's an idea : Why don't we make the whole game sprites, so that everyone can run it on 1337 frames per second?

[EdenArchangel]

I haven't been keeping a close eye on this thread. Is back-pedaling and strafing confirmed as the new animation, or have they only stated that the current animations aren't staying which still leaves room for somewhat aesthetic possibility?

[Kiote]

I don't play FFXIV to experience the oh so awesome way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs. I play it for the amazing world and character design, the animation, the music, the aesthetics.

While I personally do play Final Fantasy for the way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs, I would prefer they did whatever they had to do to make it feel like I was doing that in a Final Fantasy game. FFXIV should not sacrifice it's style for more simplified MMO mechanics. It certainly shouldn't undo 20 years of advancement in Character Model movement animations and replace them with the horrible movements of Western Wow-like MMOs.

The simple Fact is the way our characters move and interact with the world will have a very significant impact on the aesthetics and the game play. Not properly maintaining a Final Fantasy level of detail in character movement will have negative consequences. They are choosing to focus solely on combat and ui interaction. It is not that they cannot do it, they just mistakenly believe it will not have an impact. But they are wrong.

[Kiote]

I haven't been keeping a close eye on this thread. Is back-pedaling and strafing confirmed as the new animation, or have they only stated that the current animations aren't staying which still leaves room for somewhat aesthetic possibility?

Unfortunately they have not confirmed or denied backpedaling and strafing. They are simply blatant in the pre-alpha Video. It is very obvious that they have implemented "Standard" Western MMO controls which will mean A turns left it stead of runs left and D does the same to the right. S will backpedal instead of turn around and the Camera will have basicly no manual control.

[Nemy]

Quoting this in rebuttal to your statement about my limited definition of gameplay, as this proves my point more. The various definitions of gameplay out there generally talk about how the player interacts with the environment, how the game is interacted with in regards to the game rules, and will occasionally encompass more of the elements that separate the game from any form of non-interactive media. The things you listed are all characteristics of media, both interactive and non.

Heck, my five-second google found a few places basically using gameplay and game-mechanics as synonyms. This movement change is not one of them.

I'm not trying to knock what you find interesting in the game, and if this is something you'll miss, I'm sorry to hear it is going. I don't really care either way, though. But as someone who loves to argue semantics, please know that this has nothing to do with gameplay.

Well, between FFXI and XIV, i spent some time on competitive FPS and Fighting, where animation and gameplay were actually synonymous. How the character moved, in both of those genres was a game-changing part of the gameplay.

That's why i think we need a wider definition of gameplay, that includes animation.

[Arcell]

You have a very narrow idea of what gameplay is.

The general idea of gameplay is anything that makes a game, that is not graphics, sound, or dialogue/story.

Even framerate is part of the gameplay experience , if you like.

No. How it plays is gameplay, how it looks is aesthetic. Animations are purely aesthetic. If you had no animiations it would still control the same way, it just wouldn't be much to look at. In an extreme example it may be harder to tell what you're doing but you would still be able to do all the same things. Without running animations you would still move in the same direction and at the same rate, it would just look weird.

The transition to stop animations were nice I guess but I'm more than willing to live without them for a more responsive game and tighter gameplay.

Also I guess at this point it's kind of dumb to keep arguing about it though, they have spoken and that's pretty much the end of it.