Job actions glamour system

[Cetek14]

It has been suggested a few times in multiple topics on official forum, in multiple forms, so i thought i will gather everything here in one topic.

I will describe these options from the easiest to the hardest to implement. If developers decide to add it, they can do it in that order, or everything at once if they have enough manpower.

Everything suggested here should be server side, otherwise it would make no sense.

1. I would call this "trait toggle". Some jobs at specific level unlock traits which upgrade specific action and change animation. New animation is not always better, and some people would want to go back. My suggestion is to add an option to disable specific traits which will revert animation (and obviously sound effect), while keeping the battle effect (upgraded damage etc).
For example WHM at 72 lvl has Stone IV replaced by Glare. Some people might still want to throw stones at the enemy. Or MCH at 64 lvl becomes master acrobat, some people may prefer staying on the ground. This option would let revert the changes.
I hope you understand the idea.

2. Full actions glamour system. It would let us not only glamour replaced actions by traits with their previous versions, but also use removed counterparts. Especially tanks have suffered after 5.0 rework.
For example DRK could use old Power Slash combo. Or glamour The Blackest Night with Stoneskin. Or glamour Rampart for PLD with actual old Rampart, etc. They could limit it to only removed counterparts, or analyze available animations to give us more choice. Or remove whole limits, beside obvious things like glamouring AoE moves on single target attacks.

3. This is expansion of 2nd point. If there are multiple animations available for one action, they could allow us to use random animation. We could choose which animations we would like for specific action, and one of the animations would play randomly when we use said action.

I know this shouldn't be their top priority, but in my opinion this is really brilliant idea (as i said it was suggested a few times, i'm only summarizing what has been said), and very unique. Also don't forget that animations and sound effects are very important part of how job feels like. That way everyone will be able to customize their experience.
They are able to do it, at the moment SMN has very simple glamour system for carbuncles. Now they have to expand it for all jobs and actions.

If you like the idea, or specific parts of the idea, don't hesitate to send them in game suggestion via support desk menu. If we won't show them that there is demand for this, they won't add it.

[Lambdafish]

Considering they won't even add egi-glamours because making extra animations is hard, this is a huge no.

The best we can hope for with removed actions is class-specific emotes.

[Cetek14]

Considering they won't even add egi-glamours because making extra animations is hard, this is a huge no.

The whole point is that they don't have to make anything new. Everything is currently in game. They only need to create system that let us choose what we want.

[Kurando]

I think it's just a matter of consistency across the board not to have this kind of thing. So let's say you use Glare then everyone knows exactly what you are doing but if you use it and Stone IV animation comes out of nowhere, it could confuse your allies. As for actions that don't have casting times, it could be difficult again to differentiate between the animation and/or the buff, it would require looking at both to see what exactly has been used you know.

The SMN pet glamour isn't the best example as many times (before ShB) I've had players asking me to switch pets even though I had one of the right ones out all because they could not tell which one it was (Ifrit-egi or Garuda-egi disguised as Topaz Carby). This doesn't really happen now though as Titan is no longer a tank pet, but the carby colours could still cause confusion to some people regardless.

[Tint]

Yes please, I could be an ice mage then and nobody knows that I am actually doing damage! I bet the randoms in my dungeon would like this brilliant idea too.

[Cetek14]

Consistency is good argument, that's why it should be done the proper way. But if they decide that it's just too much, 1st option would be still good. I would love to use Rage of Halone as PLD. Royal Authority has no impact and too fancy animation. It wouldn't create confusion, because majority knows how traits work.

[ReiMakoto]

Im all in for this idea, having it work only on upgrade skills to start with would be great, as Im not a fan of how most upgrades look. I would much rather be using broil 1 instead of 3 for example, or malefic 2 instead of 4, and id actually like to shoot things on my MCH instead of the flippy technomancy. I don't see any harm in letting us toggle these animations as they all already exist

[Cetek14]

Bumping thread.

[Shougun]

Started as a wild tangent off someone else's idea but I thought a sphere grid / license board / merit system that was purely glamour could be quite good. Since we just toss exp off the edge into the Atomos abyss right now.

As you say in the OP it could be used for changing the appearance of skills, giving players some different looks. SMN could have upgraded egi visuals for example, maybe for "immersion" you have to go dump the exp into the shrine of that primal like a pilgrimage lol. Dark Knight getting his smokey shadow effect for Dark Side.

Job specific mounts and minions that you can unlock. Some can be goofy like Dragoon unlocks dragoon jump mount (which basically gives you moon jump in flying zones). New glamour gear, especially thinking of things that normally break glamour restrictions, like white mage might be able to unlock holy breast plate (heavy armor chest plate). If not a special job (some sort of war geomancer new top of job) I think Golbez / Ex-Death armor would be pretty neat for the mages.

As pointed out though they'd first need to build a system to replace animations and also share that info with others, like equipment almost, and that might be a lot of data/stress on the server. The other concepts in the sphere grid could still work (like mounts or armor) but I feel animation replacement would be the most challenging part.

Would be neat if possible though, further customize our characters.