Gunblade models don't need to be so extra...

[Jirah]

Speak for yourself majority of them are plainly swords, Crystarium, Neo ishgard, Shadow, Eden4, even the freaking Ultimate Anarchy is a freaking sword.

[Valic]

Speak for yourself majority of them are plainly swords, Crystarium, Neo ishgard, Shadow, Eden4, even the freaking Ultimate Anarchy is a freaking sword.

Those are for the most part done right. Neo Ishgard is a reused model like 4 times over though. Crystarium's is fine, Eden 4's is the double blade, idk what shadow one you're talking about and ultimate Anarchy is just neo ishgard, again reused model.... It's not bad for it to be a blade, it's only bad when there's no gun in it or they overdo it. Really makes me think they don't know how to go about making gunblades tbh.

I don't think that overlap in styles is a problem (we do have the Odenta on DRK, which is functionally a giant SAM weapon, and let's not forget PLD's Zantetsuken), but there is some need to make the weapons from the same instance or set look distinct. That's where the problem lies. As an example, if you were designing an ice-themed Gunblade, do you just copy over the PLD weapon and add a trigger to it? It's a bit harder to make visually distinct than say for DRK, where you can just take the PLD weapon and double its size.

Tbh I had this question for what they would do for RDM's weapon and well... you can see. I think say a shiva weapon could easily be done in such a way similar to the crystalline manatrigger we have around level 74 but smoother and less jagged. Just darken the upper portion that would be "metal" and make the blade portion more icy/translucent looking. Idk, to me it would seem awesome to be the designer for these weps considering you just draw a gun portion then add a nice smooth blade to it.