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

[Kittkat26]

I agree somewhat that the battles should be a little more responsive, not necessarily faster as in the mobs are easier or anything like that. I also dislike animation lock, it's that special time when I try to drive my 'W' or 'S' key through the keyboard from pushing the (Run Away!) button during enemy TP attacks and such. Especially as a healer, this becomes a glaring issue... which I know they're working on. As an Archer, it would be nice if the battles felt more cohesive than they do now. Faster-paced would be more exciting but I really do enjoy the animations in FFXIV.

Please don't do anything to our animations. I remember playing the game during the beta and thinking, well I'm out of quests to do but harvesting grass as a botanist looks awesome and look at the little needlepoint thing my weaver is doing! As for the crafting... while I agree that it is long and drawn out, I am generally taking a break from leveling when I craft and I don't really mind the time it takes. I like that they're "streamlining" the crafting, whatever they plan on doing, but I really enjoy the animations. This is the only game that strives to present animations and actions like they happen in RL with motion capture and such. There are many games out there that have horrible crafting, spell, gathering animations and everyone can name them. I find it hard to play games when you're crafting your new, rare, uber Robe of the Long and Drawn Out Names and your character is... rubbing their hands together. Boring.

Better spell animations would be great, I was so sad to see that Stone on Conj looked exactly like Aero and Cure and everything else. Where are the stones?? They also need to add more spells to all of the mage classes, in FFXI I had a ridiculously long list of abilities and spells at the halfway point, here I have... 8 or 10.

I disagree with instant cast anything and everything, the fact that everything takes time to cast or buff plays a strategy in the battles imo. I like that they're keeping it similar to RL in that there's a consequence to every action and make you actually think when choosing abilities and such.

I'll leave you with a horrifying video of simplified animations, true the game isn't out yet and they may be adding them later, but seriously, this is what could happen if they speed them up too much. They can move while casting but those repetitive and boring animations would bore me to tears. You can see the awesome animations about 35 seconds into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piioe...eature=related