I love beautiful animations.. but I think they're too slow for this game

[Rjain]

Did you not see this:

My last couple of posts are mostly directed towards the dodos who are supporting the slide mechanic and WoW/other MMO shit-animation mechanics. Not people with half-sensible ideas like yourself.

[Jaqe]

Although as I mentioned earlier animation lock can be annoying I cannot comprehend why so many people are having an issue with it. Battle design is centralized around implemented mechanics. These fights have been constructed and tested with animation lock in mind. I never have a problem with animation lock. The only time I had a problem with animation lock was when I was new to a fight, or if I ended up doing something stupid. You die in fights, that happens.

Animation lock is annoying.

Holes in Super Mario are annoying.

Those god damn reapers in Resident Evil 5 that pop out of nowhere and pick you up and repeatedly eviscerate you are annoying.

It's an element of the game you work around. I don't think it's a glitch, it's a mechanic, and it's one I find visually appealing. I DO NOT WANT to see my character sliding around while shooting a bow or casting a spell. What is this, the 90s?

Practice not sucking. Simple enough. I can't recall the last time animation lock has messed me over unless I did something stupid. If I can do it, you guys can do it. Stop QQing.

I agree with Rjain. Nothing much I can add here.
These animations are what kept me playing. Besides the people.

[Treach]

^ Pretty much thread.

[OJtheLIONKing]

Personally, I think focusing too much on graphics to the cost of actual gameplay is part of why SE games have not been doing too well. This is especially sad because this generation many western games have caught up to or surpassed Japanese games in the graphics department while also having great gameplay--look at The Witcher 2 or Arkham City. Yes, SE games are very pretty, but if you don't have fun playing them, there's no point. Gameplay must come first, end of story. I love great fluid graphics like FFXIV has, but at the end of the day that's not going to keep me on the game if the graphics cause the actual gameplay to work terribly as they have in the past.

It is possible to have both by having animations for individual sections of the body, which has been shown in series like Uncharted, and yes, FFXIII-2. Even if there weren't, it would still be a much better idea to have sliding weaponskills than a pretty ws that gets you killed because the game doesn't want you interfering with its light show with your selfish desire to avoid death. If SE can have more fights with mechanics like Ifrit while fixing the animation lock problems, they'll have a real contender. If they don't fix animation lock and have the same tank and spank stand in the same safe spot fights that plagued almost all of FFXI, this game will fail, and no one here wants that.

[Firon]

I don't give a damn if i slide as long as i dodge the attack.

[mhaid2000]

Personally, i think the animations are fine. Id rather have cool looking animations than choppy quick ones like the kind u see in wow. Just my preference but i feel the animations for battle should stay but the animations for crafting need to be cut back. Also when it comes to crafting, give an option similar to that of WoW and RIFT in letting us choose how many of an item to craft and have our character craft it. And if u want to make a HQ item, just use the other system. Just a suggestion that i think would make crafting a world of ways easier.

[Neptune]

Rjain you are on the wrong side of the debate here. With your attachment to the graphics and animations, you should be on my side. I started this discussion and I like the animations. They are what sets FFXIV apart, but they look like they were designed in a vacuum away from gameplay. Their implementation is unfinished and rough. You can't possibly argue with that. My OP details the finer points of animation suggestions to the dev team to keep the beauty and give these animations the implementation they always deserved.

What are you afraid of, that the dev team is going to read my post and do away with all of their hard work? Don't kid yourself. If they follow my suggestions they will find a way to leverage their completed work in a way that works best for the game, which is quite honestly what they should be doing anyway. Why the current game hasn't been tweaked is totally baffling. Anyway you need to get on my side and start thinking constructively. Unless a scalpel is taken to these animations this game doesn't stand a chance.

It's not going to be thrown in the trash by the critics; it's already in the trash. At this point we are asking critics to take another look at a rotting piece of trash they threw away close to 2 years ago. The game is only hanging by a thread in your mind. The thread has already been cut.

[Phobos]

Animation lock is present in a lot of games, and coping with it properly is what defines a skilled player. In some games, dealing with animation lock means clipping yourself out of longer ones with shorter ones, or chaining them fast enough to clip 3 or 4 and only see the last animation. In FFXIV, you just have to deal with it. Not locking yourself at times you could get killed is a skill.

There's things you need to get used to in any game. In FFXIV, it's just getting used to not killing yourself with animation lock.

The only thing I can get behind removing would be the animation lock at the end of a spell - this does seem extra punitive because you had to stand there casting the whole time anyway, and if you're moving before the spell finishes but don't interrupt in time you get punished by the server delay letting your cast finish and lock you.

[Jinko]

Animation lock is present in a lot of games, and coping with it properly is what defines a skilled player. In some games, dealing with animation lock means clipping yourself out of longer ones with shorter ones, or chaining them fast enough to clip 3 or 4 and only see the last animation. In FFXIV, you just have to deal with it. Not locking yourself at times you could get killed is a skill.

There's things you need to get used to in any game. In FFXIV, it's just getting used to not killing yourself with animation lock.

The only thing I can get behind removing would be the animation lock at the end of a spell - this does seem extra punitive because you had to stand there casting the whole time anyway, and if you're moving before the spell finishes but don't interrupt in time you get punished by the server delay letting your cast finish and lock you.

Show me any modern game that suffers animation lock, I can't think of any and certainly not the newest MMO's around, which are moving more towards action based combat.

I don't think dealing with animation lock is a skill... its more a necessity.

[northernsky]

I don't think dealing with animation lock is a skill... its more a necessity.

I don't totally agree with this.

For instance, dealing with mobs animation lock is a skill, it allows us to avoid some of their most punishing attacks. In this case the chance of being avoided is a trade-off to the strength of the attack, from the mob's perspective.

It's the same for players. You could auto-attack the whole fight, or take the risk to launch greater damage at the expense of being hit by a mob special attack.

What makes me further think that it is actually planned that way is the self combo system. That would have to be the most punishing animation lock. If you throw 2-4 WS in a row, you deal considerable damage in a short amount of time for a ridiculous amount of TP and more importantly, a large part of the combos include possibilities to alleviate the risk of animation lock, such as "stun" or "pacify" effects.

So yeah, I think animation lock is part of the game design, and like some others say, the absence of animation lock for doomspike was "corrected" in the last patch.

That said I would like it to be more fluid and less punishing, either by making it a bit faster, or by at least reducing, or removing, the lock before and after the actual animation