Casting and spell animations...lackluster?

[Sushi]

Agreed! I prefer casting spells in ffxi.

[arlee]

Agreed! I prefer casting spells in ffxi.

I prefer the spells and weapon skills in XI, the ones in this game are just plain sad and boring. 95% of the skills animations are yawn Also the sfx for the skills or magic are boring too.

No clue how they went from XI skills to this garbage

[Valentia]

Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt as though the combat animations were largely underwhelming.(oxymoron alert!)

What this game is missing is the same amount of, "Wow! that is COOL!" That we got from FFVII-FFX. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzLit5oBQ8M

The spell casting sounds are sub-par to typical Square Enix quality, the magial effects are dull and uninteresting, the exception being spam heals during behest/parties, and the only nice animations that I have seen so far would be the end-game PUG attacks and mid-game/end-game archer skills. Square, I hope you're reading and translating this!

[Lusavari]

Well. Let's think about which ones have cool and unique animations: Earth Render, Arrow Helix, Iron Tempest...

And then I know Axe has two WS types. There's the Upward Swing, and the Over Head Smash. the standard upward swing works for slashing skills, while the overhead smash is truer for blunt skills. It is true they could do something fancier. than reusing a lot of those.

Most of the spells don't bother me a lot. Protect and Shell: Awesome job. Stoneskin... It's OK... it's more like a wall than skin. The animation for when you get hit with it on is far better. And then there's the attack spells. Fire, Water, Thunder, and Aero seem Alright to me. Blizzard is a little to plain, it's just a frost cloud. But the only attack spell I find really unacceptable is Stone. It's like a glowy hard to see pebble is shot into the monster, followed by a poof of a dust cloud, and even that's hard to notice. It's just to plain.

For Stone, the old XI rising rocks animation was always cool. And for Blizzard, it'd be awesome if it was just adjusted to at the end, you had the cloud consolidate, and make a spikey ice crystal.

[Sushi]

why do all the buffs in 14 wear off in 2-5min?

I don't like this setting.

[Munba]

Agree, they need to be enanched a lot. Especially the 'weapon skills' (need more different animations and effects). Also spells should be more visually stunning (the stronger ones of course). Final Fantasy Tactics comes me to mind as very well made spell effects title (not too exagerated but functional and pretty stunning/charming).

[viion]

It hurts me how bad they are haha need some tags on this

[Teknoman]

why do all the buffs in 14 wear off in 2-5min?

I don't like this setting.

Thats something I know they were looking into fixing.

[Kurokikaze]

Also, whats with this cinematic lighting that was introduced for weapon skills and spells in combat (wasnt there in Alpha or early Beta)? It's looks kinda stupid and its fairly annoying to see it happening non-stop while fighting.

[LongshotAlbion]

This is something that really bothers me too. Spell animations are extremely sub-par when compared to Final Fantasy XI. Take Stoneskin for example. I always loved this animation in XI, it would fill your screen. But in XIV, it just looks like a gravestone pops up in front me. For a game that touted its graphics and animation capabilities they couldve done a much better job in this department. I read up a few posts about casting animation. Wheres the ether and sparkles of casting flowing around me!? I'm still playing and i'm pulling for you Yoshi. But this is something that absolutely must be addressed.