Is it just a feeling? [Suggestion: battle animations]

[Lionheart]

I just watched the new video about darkhold and stuff. I was truly amazed by the scenario, the enemies, the little cinematic and musics too. But when battle scenes came I was a little confused and I finally realized what was that wierd feeling I had watching ffxiv battles. I can't get a hold of what's going on... I can barely follow distinguish skills thrown at enemy because too much is going on at the same time... and that's just for an 8 people party. I also noticed that every single skill animation happens either and only on the caster or the target or both so that's nearly impossible to backtrace an animation to understand which player threw it.

So here is my suggestion: On some skills add an animated link between caster and target. For example an Archer's skill could draw the entire trajectory instead of just the begining and ending part. Conjurers elemental spells like fire, blizzard, thunder may as well be rendered as something actually threw by the caster.

Also you could work more on vertical axes, from what I saw up till now is not very used. All animations are developed at the same height. Nearly nothing comes from above and really few things from below the target. Basically all the skills animations are the same in terms of space (besides scale).

I hope I managed to gave you the idea of what I'm feeling about animations. Don't take my examples as something I want to be done as I said because I'm sure there are even better solutions. I just wanted to better define the issue I can see about that.

Thanks for the time you spent reading

[Rane]

I agree with you. It would be nice if some ranged skills or magic originated at the player and actually flew toward the target. It certainly wouldn't work for everything, but some abilities/magic might look better if the graphical effect included the entire trajectory from origin to target.

[Wolfie]

I would like to see some sort of charge, like static charge, build up around a target as you're casting a spell. Maybe restrict it to ancient magic or other very powerful spells only.

It would add a lot of cool flavor to casters.

[Evangela]

Agree, but do not make it like FF13 which people throwing magic to the mob but look more like throwing some shit

magic need more epicness

[zaviermhigo]

I could only follow the thm that was recording, so I do agree with this. Also love that attack for 8000 that just wiped the party. Can we get a blue type class lol?

[Malakhim]

It's more than a feelin'.

[Tibian]

Supported.

I too have no idea what goes on in battles basically because everything originates and ends on the target.

Magic trails would help immensely. With that being said, I don't think they should get carried away with it either.

Cure, Protect, Shell, Sacrifice, Poisona, etc.. those types of spells don't need trails, but I would prefer to see more animation on the character side. When we cast spells, its just that generic wand flick and color waiting. That is incredibly boring. It is literally the same animation for every single spell. Im not demanding every spell has to have a unique casting animation (although it would be really nice...) but a variety of casting animations would be wonderful.

I am going to link some spell casting suggestions for SE to look at and understand how they can make casters more unique.

Priest of Mitra Spellweaving (A more advanced form of casting in general, but the animations are very nice. The particular video is a tag laggy.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FBt...eature=related

Tera Mystic Animations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zek0tCRNnIw

If you look at the Tera animations, you notice there are a variety of unique "character casting" animations for several spells. FFXIV just has that one boring wand flick with some color.

Overall, I believe casting and spell animations are still being looked at by the dev team, and if you watch the latest video there were a few additions/changes? If I am mistaken correct me.

Regardless, battle animations (especially casters) need to be completely redone.

I would appreciate trails on stuff like archer skills, phantom dart, fire, water. The aoe versions (granted they are getting redone) would just have multiple trails originate from the caster and attack the targets.

[Verecund]

It's more a casualty of playing with several players at the same time against 1 target I think. If they toned down the size of spell graphics (even WoW's dev team has started thinking about this as of late XD), I think it would help some. It would also be nice for them to design some projectiles as well, given that (1) they look awesome and (2) this game has no projectile spell effects period

Also, if they implement Ultima in the future as a "bloom" spell, I will literally uninstall.

[Kailok]

If I remember correctly, SE plans on changing the animation styles for attacks and casting based on class and race. I know they mentioned Attacks at least. Perhaps I'm just being hopeful on the other part, and if so, then it needs to be done. I remember seeing BLMs in FFXI (yes, I made a reference to FFXI, calm down please.) they really looked like they were about to nuke the crap out of something the way their animation looked just from casting.

Personally, if a CON starts casting something like Firaga II, I want their hands to be bursting with flames, growing up their arms, and then all of those flames get shot toward the Enemy. They could have different animations for different tiers of spells for casters.

Fire I - Just hands are enveloped in fire, a small fireball is hurled toward enemy, along with an animation for the hit.
Fire II - Hands up to elbows are covered in flame, and a larger fireball is hurled to the enemy, along with hitting animation on target.
Fire III - Hands all the way up to shoulders are covered in flame, which is larger than the other two, hurled to mob, with a large explosion upon impact
Flare (Ancient Magic) - Entire body is covered in flame, and then is sent towards the mob through a texture on the ground that looks like lava breaking stone (the texture could look like this: http://l.thumbs.canstockphoto.com/canstock5603779.jpg, in a straight path heading toward the enemy), hits the target and then explodes from the ground like a volcano.

And each different type of element could have it's own stylizing toward it's tiers of magic. Just a thought.

[Volsung]

I think they mentioned 1.19 would be ushering in some animation changes. For example in the auto attack video chaos thrust and rage of halone (I think thats their sill names anyhow) looked very changed.