Animated World Objects [Can I have them?]

[Platinumstorm]

Developers redoing "the entire world" seems to be understood differently by each person mentioning it. As someone said above they won't scrap the whole world and make something instantly better, animated and memorable. It's going to be patch up work. If their engine allowed them to manage world objects' animations easily and they were capable of utilizing such feature efficiently, the current world wouldn't be as static to start with.

You also ought to realize that asking them to put a lot of dynamic world objects in the game is already asking something the current generation of mmorpgs hasn't really accomplished effectively. Then again, i feel the world of FFXI was already more dynamic and much more memorable than FFXIV's, starting with the way you board a ship...

You're blaming the engine instead of the developers who released a game with 18 quests and broken systems that have to be completely redone?

Animations don't have to be blown out of proportion, btw. For example, placing some swaying trees in pots in Ul'dah, having guards walking from place to place, or a deliveryman taking supplies to the Grand Company, or making an animated ripple to the cloth in Ul'dah would help make it lose its "awkwardness".

Their redo of the world is going to be a lot more than "patch work," but I would assume they won't simply trash the assets they already have made.

People say they hate the shroud, that it is all copy/paste with winding passages. Yes it has long winding passages but did anyone ever stop to look? I was exploring up around the Five Hangs node near Bentbranch and the detail they put up there with the forest, the canopy, the water, flowers, heck there is even a dock up there and it has some gorgeous areas to just sit and relax. The water scenes around the dock there and around the bridges are beautiful places that I doubt many people ever bothered to explore. I just wish we could fish up there ^^

With the redesign of the maps they are doing, I just hope they leave those areas untouched because I would be very sad to see them changed just because of a few complaints!

"A few complaints," lol. I would say the world design is one of the primary reasons people quit the game. They definitely have some nice art assets, but far too few to make an interesting zone of that scale. Once those art assets are abused and placed over a gigantic territory, the repetitiveness of the entire zone comes into effect. Likely, the zones were also generated randomly by computers with very loose specifications, and simply touched up by devs. Keep in mind there's nothing wrong with reusing assets, but when you can open your map and point out every cave entrance, every ramp, and every tree layout, within a very close vicinity of you there is a massive problem with the world design. The art assets in the game likely won't disappear, as I said earlier, but expect many more and a nicer variety of artwork. The only zone that seems to truly have a variety of environments atm is Thanalan.


That's also hinted in the Famitsu interview for the new one too [as a run through by a computer is very common place], but could just be a translation thing.

As a side note I have no idea how this got turned into a "world design" thread, when it's simply about how adding in animation to the existing game or world revamp would help tons and add needed character to the game.

[Jennestia]

Developers redoing "the entire world" seems to be understood differently by each person mentioning it. As someone said above they won't scrap the whole world and make something instantly better, animated and memorable. It's going to be patch up work. If their engine allowed them to manage world objects' animations easily and they were capable of utilizing such feature efficiently, the current world wouldn't be as static to start with.

For someone that refers to a redo being understood by people differently you seem to be a bit confused about something. If the engine allows player and monster models to be animated it allows objects to be animated, they're not completely interdependent of each other as it's all 1 animation system, but certain things can be handled by different functions. Crystal Tools allow animated objects (ever seen FF versus XIII footage? Or played XIII?) They just didn't fully utilize it for XIV.

XIV just isn't optimized enough yet and still largely unfinished.

[Zaireeka2025]

Please yes, more animated objects like trees waving in the wind (very slightly animated), small critters running around, and NPC's/caravans walking the main routes in cities and fields!

[miqokini]

YES, PLEASE!!!!!!!

Even though FFXIV trumps FFXI in graphics, Vana'diel still feels far more 'alive' than Eorzea. And that's because of the animated objects. I loved the fact that there were tiny grasshoppers jumping about in bushes if you looked close enough, butterflies fluttering about, birds soaring high in the sky, fish jumping out of water, geysers, etc. Even the NPCs felt more 'alive' in XI.

I know the comparisons are always made between the two games, but it does make me a very sad panda that XI still does so many things better than XIV. I do have faith that Yoshi and his team will eventually address all these issues, and one day FFXIV will be far superior to XI.

[Jennestia]

YES, PLEASE!!!!!!!

Even though FFXIV trumps FFXI in graphics, Vana'diel still feels far more 'alive' than Eorzea. And that's because of the animated objects. I loved the fact that there were tiny grasshoppers jumping about in bushes if you looked close enough, butterflies fluttering about, birds soaring high in the sky, fish jumping out of water, geysers, etc. Even the NPCs felt more 'alive' in XI.

I know the comparisons are always made between the two games, but it does make me a very sad panda that XI still does so many things better than XIV. I do have faith that Yoshi and his team will eventually address all these issues, and one day FFXIV will be far superior to XI.

Which is exactly why, as many certain XIV zealots like to spout off, us that want a "FFXI-2" were mainly referring to how they'd take all that XI has done and made it better. For example think of the barge ride from Bibiki Bay > Puraggogo Island where the Dolphins follow you and leap about? That would have been beautiful in XIV's world as they could do much more with it.

[Seif]

I have a smaller request: everything seems way too polished and new.
How is there absolutely no weather maps in the entire game? Just look at the beautifully dirty mason-work at bastok to see what this game is missing.

All of the pathways in LL (a structure that should take hundreds of years to build with this technology) looks like nobody has ever set foot in the town. The wood surfaces look dead like they haven't seen any locals walk on them leaving scratches or signs of life. The bridge that leads to a muddy field looks like perfectly polished stone that nobody has used.

The glass surfaces of the lamps look like they just flew out of a high-tech factory and haven't seen any rain in their life.

Ul'dah a city in a desert doesn't have any sand gathered in the any of the corners. Everything is pristine like the whole city just warped there in it's entirety just seconds ago.

Gridania a village in the woods has absolutely no vines growing on the side of the buildings. All of the floors of even the busiest guilds look just as new as the walls of the building. The bridge looks like nobody has ever walked on it and the fabrics of the stalls look like leaves never fall from the trees that completely block the sun.

This all gives of an eerie sterile feeling to the entire game like you just walked in to a half finished fake-movie set.

I hope the area re-design also includes tweaks to the textures so that the world that's supposed to have this deep history to it actually looks the part.

[Kirith]

For someone that refers to a redo being understood by people differently you seem to be a bit confused about something. If the engine allows player and monster models to be animated it allows objects to be animated, they're not completely interdependent of each other as it's all 1 animation system, but certain things can be handled by different functions. Crystal Tools allow animated objects (ever seen FF versus XIII footage? Or played XIII?) They just didn't fully utilize it for XIV.

XIV just isn't optimized enough yet and still largely unfinished.

I am not confused, as i have experience with game development. I could waste an hour explaining my thoughts about how the engine works, but i'll just say that i have never seen an engine treat world objects and character objects in the same manner in a finalized, optimized game. If a sign you want to move and the house it's attached to are one mesh, you first need to separate them to make one animated. It then means the animation module must run for that one object AND its parent object in the world, so you need to make the sign its own object...this can cause trouble if your engine treats animated objects differently and you can only have a certain amount of such objects on screen at any given time.

If the engine is optimized in a way that makes the static scenario effectively static it would be problematic to add much more life to it than what it already has. Sure, it surely mustn't be that hard to add a few animated objects here and there, but i definitely wouldn't expect for my impression of the world to change radically after said changes take place.

[SilvertearRen]

The finer details of environment design helps bring the world to life. That is important to remember. Especially when you put it in the proper context.

So here's a basic shortlist of what we should like to see with the world overhaul:

• Animated Objects (Guylines, flags, trees swaying in the wind, etc)
• Established Routines for NPCs (Patrols, Chocobo Deliveries, etc)
• Randomized NPC encounters along major travel routes. (Imperial/Beastman ambushes, etc)
• Visual wear and tear on environment & objects. (Worn wooden floorboards, scuffed stone, dust/sand/dirt/junk gathering in corners, etc)

This is a very simplified list and should help the developers keep things simple. We don't want to have the devs try to do too many things all at once, or nothing would get finished.

What you want the most in FFXIV is a world that gives an atmosphere that feels like it's been "lived in" for millennia through the astral and umbral eras of yore. Here is a list of main sticking points on two major cities about the current art direction - this should at least point out the problems.

• Limsa Lominsa is supposed to be a city that has been lived in for a long time, yet it looks like it was built overnight (Rome was not built in a single night).
• Ul'dah was supposed to be a city that has existed for thousands of years as a major commerce hub, and also as a pit of scum and villainy. There are no indications of any of this - the stones look freshly-laid, there are no scuff marks on the pathways leading into and out of Ul'dah...and the Gladiator Arena itself looks spotless, when there should be a lot of dirt and grime all over the place indicative of thousands of battles waged.

[Munba]

Agree with OP, Eorzea lacking in this department. Hope in a fresh wind of life everywhere when the redesign will take place. And trees and brushes moving too subtle when the strong wind blows.

I have a smaller request: everything seems way too polished and new.
How is there absolutely no weather maps in the entire game? Just look at the beautifully dirty mason-work at bastok to see what this game is missing.

All of the pathways in LL (a structure that should take hundreds of years to build with this technology) looks like nobody has ever set foot in the town. The wood surfaces look dead like they haven't seen any locals walk on them leaving scratches or signs of life. The bridge that leads to a muddy field looks like perfectly polished stone that nobody has used.

The glass surfaces of the lamps look like they just flew out of a high-tech factory and haven't seen any rain in their life.

Ul'dah a city in a desert doesn't have any sand gathered in the any of the corners. Everything is pristine like the whole city just warped there in it's entirety just seconds ago.

Gridania a village in the woods has absolutely no vines growing on the side of the buildings. All of the floors of even the busiest guilds look just as new as the walls of the building. The bridge looks like nobody has ever walked on it and the fabrics of the stalls look like leaves never fall from the trees that completely block the sun.

This all gives of an eerie sterile feeling to the entire game like you just walked in to a half finished fake-movie set.

I hope the area re-design also includes tweaks to the textures so that the world that's supposed to have this deep history to it actually looks the part.

Yeah, same sensation as well..

[Tezz_Xivectro]

There should be dragons flying in the sky shooting fire at garlean airships near/around Coerthas!