Remove Weapon Rack from Strife Vest

[Niwashi]

Whether the sheaths are iconic or not is up for debate. (My vote would be "not" since they're just an Advent Children thing.) But regardless, they're clearly not part of the vest. They're part of the swords they're designed to hold. If we don't get the arsenal of swords, then we shouldn't get that odd piece of it attached to an unrelated vest. An empty sheath (let alone an empty multi-sheath thing) is just weird.

I do, however, agree with Bhuni on one point. An on/off toggle for this one item when no other chest slot items have such a toggle would not be an effortless feature to add, and probably not worthwhile unless there was a wide range of such items with parts to toggle on/off.

I just find it odd that those sheaths were included in the first place.

[Averax]

I don't even remember if cloud used that holster for the entire movie. (except for one sword)

Acceptable solution: Make it a toggle.

As someone has mentioned before. It's not really an iconic part of the outfit, because they ditch it altogether in his Dissidia costume.

[Amberyl]

As for this endless debate about what the outfit entails - go look up the Play Arts KAI range figure of Cloud on the Square Enix store. That's the definition of this look for him, as it is with every other figure in the range. No details missed out, no feature too small - the KAI range mo.

[HakuroDK]

As for this endless debate about what the outfit entails - go look up the Play Arts KAI range figure of Cloud on the Square Enix store. That's the definition of this look for him, as it is with every other figure in the range. No details missed out, no feature too small - the KAI range mo.

Well clearly they left in too many details, because the left sleeve is missing from the FFXIV version. Not to mention that the only reason the weapon rack is there in the first place is to sheathe all of those swords that come with the figure. So if we're going to continue seeing the weapon rack, then I demand that all six swords be sheathed on the outfit.

[Amberyl]

~then I demand that all six swords be sheathed on the outfit.

Pretty much sums the entire mood up, lol.

[Noxifer]

As for this endless debate about what the outfit entails - go look up the Play Arts KAI range figure of Cloud on the Square Enix store. That's the definition of this look for him, as it is with every other figure in the range. No details missed out, no feature too small - the KAI range mo.

So... You mean that instead of asking for a possibility to not have those empty holsters/sheaths/scabbards/whatchamacallits on our backs, we should ask to get them filled with weapons?




Sure thing =D

The problem is... those sheaths really don't serve any purpose (other than clipping/being in the way) when we can't use them for anything. A scabbard/sheath/holster is there for the sole purpose of storing a weapon in it when you don't use said weapon. The garment in itself is good, but those scabbard thingies make it very difficult (at least for me, and probably other people as well) to fit it into a glamour outfit. ^^;

[Titor]

I really wish it did not have the holster on the back it feels so out of place for many jobs

[Kanemano]

Is this easy or is it not? From a game developer's perspective (ie; me)

If the rest of the body has an ambient occlusion pass baked in to indicate the shadows from the holsters, then it could be an issue, otherwise, if they just remove the sheathes, it shouldn't be a problem visually; there just wouldn't be polys that show that part of the map.

The other question is if the sheath verts are tied in to the main rigging (which is likely the case), and therefore, the verts are weighted to the animation. It can be problematic with blend weights (ie; broken animations/rigging) when vertices that are expected to be there suddenly aren't. Although, game engines nowadays are able to take existing animations and apply them to newer models, so this point may be moot.

One thing they COULD do though, potentially, is make a new texture file that has the sheaths textured as an alpha. Then they wouldn't render, but the verts would still be there. This shouldn't take too much effort, as professional texture map files are made so that all the bits and pieces are easily identifiable and seperated by layers/folders in the photoshop doc. This would be an easy (but kinda hacky) fix. The new item would just need a new item ID to be put into the game database (non-issue).

It would still need to be bug-tested before released, they probably have their own in-house determination scale on how much bug-testing new equipment requires, potentially it could be less because it's simply a modification to an already existing game asset.

Edit: Actually, a lot of the armor sets get re-used by utilizing the alpha method already. The skirt-type for example, I assume all use the same "skirt" mesh (this technique was used constantly in XI, as well as XIV). The behavior for all skirt animations are already in there, it's just a matter of baking down all the information from the newly designed armor (normal maps/texture/ambient/etc), which then dictates where the alpha "pokes" holes through the skirt (like instead of the front of a skirt, one asset might have it open with belts going across).

This is not an uncommon way to be efficient on asset use, and normal maps help indicate form where it should be flat, versus having actual polygon geometry.

Is it easy? It sure seems like it to me. But time taken to do this takes away time doing something else, and as hard pressed as SE's crew is on time trying to please everyone and create all this content, it's more stuff on top of the pile at the end of the day.

[ElHeggunte]

The sheath swings empty in the breeze and serves no purpose like a freshly neutered dog's scrot. It should have never been a part of the vest if it wasn't going to include the sword(s). They removed the sheath from Lightning's Guardian Corps. outfit for the very same reason: it would have just flapped around lamely because we have nothing that would "sheath" in it (and it was probably a nightmare to animate properly anyway) and having the Blaze Edge as an actual weapon meant they couldn't have the handle sticking out as part of the model either.

[Evangela]

It's a punishment for everyone that want to wear Nomura's outfits.

keep it.