Snap Emote

[Shougun]

For those saying the emote can't exist without the mogshop... what about the snap that is already in game? Emett's snap.

It would seem very unlikely they'll release that one now that they can make money off the one with special effects, but we could have had a snap pretty much just like that "in game" lol.

Could totally be wrong but it looks like to me the mogshop just jumped in line with a party popper and took and entirely possible emote off the in game menu.


Feels a bit Slepnir like, and if someone says we couldn't have got that mount without the mogshop I'm going to roll my eyes over in this corner here lol.

Which is to say I get if they made something entirely separate from the game (like certain outfits are clearly never going to happen if it wasn't for the shop), but this honestly looks like it either used assets from the game with an enhanced fanfare effect (special effect), or let's say it was 100% scratch but then they still just bumped something that could have been made available in game out of the list by making slightly "better" in it's place (I'm assuming they're not going to make Emett's snap available in game now since "money", but they could prove me wrong- please do lol).

[Divinemights]

Listen, people will say whatever they want to say to make themselves feels better, no one can change that.
S/E is already very open with how Mog Station works: separate entity, standalone team, and there is also issue with Chinese and Korean contractor.
Nay sayer will find every thing they can dig to against Mog Station but concept remains simple: Buy it if you want it or don't buy it if you don't want to spend. It is vanity and doesn't impact the gameplay.
Stop whining about pay to increase level, it is clearly S/E gave up because too many WoW boys want a faster way in and out.
Again, buy the emote if you really want it and support a game you loved and don't buy it if you have so many issues with it.
If you are still have issue, it is your vanity at play, nothing to do with community that support Mog Station or SE

[Packetdancer]

For those saying the emote can't exist without the mogshop... what about the snap that is already in game? Emett's snap.

Emotes are tied to specific animation skeletons, though; trying to apply an animation for an Au Ra male to a lalafell female will not work. Unique NPC animations—like Emet-Selch's snap—can't be just pushed live and hey, they work. Those emotes generally only exist for whichever racial animation setup that NPC uses, which I believe in Emet-Selch's case (and that of all the Ancients) is the male Elezen animation skeleton; they'd need to create the racial variant animations for all the other racial animation rigs.

The same is true of clothing; while the model for Lyse's Ala Mhigan gown exists in game, it exists in game for Lyse's model, which uses the Hyuran Highlander female base. So sure, they could push that gown live... for Highlander ladies. If they wanted to offer it for other races, they'd need other racial models for it.

(And they would need to offer it for other races; if they chose to go "well, we'll just push it live as a Highlander-exclusive outfit" people would howl bloody murder. Just like if they made Emet-Selch's snap available... but only for male Elezen.)

The fact that the Mog Station is handled by a separate team is why those things happen: when the dev team doesn't have time to take a custom emote or piece of clothing and make all the necessary racial variants for it to be used by PCs, the Mog Station team—who are a wholly separate team and aren't exactly working on making raids or rebalancing jobs or whatever—can take that base clothing or emote or hairstyle and go, "Okay, we'll make the Au Ra, Hrothgar, Viera, etc. versions of this for the shop."

This is also almost certainly why adding new races is increasingly painful for the devs and why they've said they're not likely to do it again; instead of going "Well, now we need to make all the missing racial variants for Emet-Selch's snap animation" or "we need to make versions of Lyse's dress for all the other racial models", it's "we need to make the racial variant for this new race for every emote, hairstyle, piece of gear, etc. in the game which we'll have them able to use." And that's not a small thing to do. It makes for a huge bag of worms to deal with. Angry worms. Who are probably on fire, or made of lava.

And those lava worms are almost certainly why we got a lot of reused gear models this expansion; if you're going back and adding racial variants of—for instance—Shire gear for two new races, you might as well re-use those Shire gear models for something in ShB! Since time you might've used making new armor sets was used redoing every old armor set in the game. And so on.

(And this is without getting into the complexities of bringing content in from the Korean or Chinese cash shops, which is almost certainly its own entirely separate large bag of angry fire-worms.)

[Haruka_R]

The same is true of clothing; while the model for Lyse's Ala Mhigan gown exists in game, it exists in game for Lyse's model, which uses the Hyuran Highlander female base. So sure, they could push that gown live... for Highlander ladies. If they wanted to offer it for other races, they'd need other racial models for it.

Don't you mean Midlander?

[Packetdancer]

Don't you mean Midlander?

Yes. Sorry, was posting with half-a-brain while in a meeting; I thought 'Midlander' and just wrote 'Highlander' out of habit (as I am one).

[Shougun]

Emotes are tied to specific animation skeletons, though; trying to apply an animation for an Au Ra male to a lalafell female will not work. Unique NPC animations—like Emet-Selch's snap—can't be just pushed live and hey, they work. Those emotes generally only exist for whichever racial animation setup that NPC uses, which I believe in Emet-Selch's case (and that of all the Ancients) is the male Elezen animation skeleton; they'd need to create the racial variant animations for all the other racial animation rigs.

The same is true of clothing; while the model for Lyse's Ala Mhigan gown exists in game, it exists in game for Lyse's model, which uses the Hyuran Highlander female base. So sure, they could push that gown live... for Highlander ladies. If they wanted to offer it for other races, they'd need other racial models for it.

(And they would need to offer it for other races; if they chose to go "well, we'll just push it live as a Highlander-exclusive outfit" people would howl bloody murder. Just like if they made Emet-Selch's snap available... but only for male Elezen.)

The fact that the Mog Station is handled by a separate team is why those things happen: when the dev team doesn't have time to take a custom emote or piece of clothing and make all the necessary racial variants for it to be used by PCs, the Mog Station team—who are a wholly separate team and aren't exactly working on making raids or rebalancing jobs or whatever—can take that base clothing or emote or hairstyle and go, "Okay, we'll make the Au Ra, Hrothgar, Viera, etc. versions of this for the shop."

This is also almost certainly why adding new races is increasingly painful for the devs and why they've said they're not likely to do it again; instead of going "Well, now we need to make all the missing racial variants for Emet-Selch's snap animation" or "we need to make versions of Lyse's dress for all the other racial models", it's "we need to make the racial variant for this new race for every emote, hairstyle, piece of gear, etc. in the game which we'll have them able to use." And that's not a small thing to do. It makes for a huge bag of worms to deal with. Angry worms. Who are probably on fire, or made of lava.

And those lava worms are almost certainly why we got a lot of reused gear models this expansion; if you're going back and adding racial variants of—for instance—Shire gear for two new races, you might as well re-use those Shire gear models for something in ShB! Since time you might've used making new armor sets was used redoing every old armor set in the game. And so on.

(And this is without getting into the complexities of bringing content in from the Korean or Chinese cash shops, which is almost certainly its own entirely separate large bag of angry fire-worms.)

Still seems a bit of an excuse, they already did a large portion of the work (creatively at least, I know there is animation bone issues), in game, and they may have had to do some more but to suggest it couldn't have been done seems dishonest, especially since in this case they already made progress towards the final result (or that they've done something similar for another npc in this game, to show precedence that it 'can' be done), but it'll be what it is I guess.

Some people will say SE can do no wrong and others will say they only do wrong. SE will continue to do whatever SE wants. Nothing will change in the end anyways lol.

[Violet_Galaxy]

So many people hard up for $7 but can afford to sub? Ok whatever. Anyway, good emote! Bit surprise we got this so soon tbh.

[Packetdancer]

Still seems a bit of an excuse, they already did a large portion of the work (creatively at least, I know there is animation bone issues), in game, and they may have had to do some more but to suggest it couldn't have been done seems dishonest, especially since in this case they already made progress towards the final result (or that they've done something similar for another npc in this game, to show precedence that it 'can' be done), but it'll be what it is I guess.

I mean, I don't think anyone's saying it couldn't be done? My point is just that "this thing exists for NPCs, therefore it's absolutely zero effort to make it available for every PC ever" is not true. Could the main dev team have made the emote and put it in as an in-game reward? Absolutely! But is that dev time that could've been spent on something else? Also yes!

In general, the dev team is probably going to try to err on the side of "make consumable content"; the animators on the dev team would probably spend time on animations for the next raid tier's cutscenes, for cutscenes in the Bozjan Southern Front content, cutscene animations for the next MSQ chapter, etc. (Especially with the new tricks we've seen them do with cutscene animations in 5.3, and to a lesser extent in 5.2!)

And moreover, I think that's probably where the majority of the playerbase would prefer they spend their time, given the number of "we want more content per patch" threads that spring up.

So while, yes, the core dev team could absolutely make the existing Emet-Selch emote available for all the races from a technical standpoint, unless someone chooses to do that on their own time, the time needed to flesh out all the other animations is time that will not be available to work on some other task.

The Mog Station team is not working on any of that content, as they are (as has been noted) a wholly separate team; they literally have nothing to do except generate glam, emotes, and mounts.

Would I prefer that stuff like this was available in-game? Yeah, it'd be nice. But if the options are:

1. In-game, but at the expense of some other content.
2. Not available at all.
3. In the Mog Station.

...then I'll take the Mog Station option.

And again, this doesn't account for the complexities involved in pulling content made for the Chinese and Korean cash shops over to the global cash shop; once you have a separate non-Emet-Selch snap that was made for one of the international cash shops, I'm fairly sure it has to be in the global cash shop if it comes over to the global version. For one thing, my understanding is that Square-Enix has to license back content created specifically for the Chinese and Korean variants, and for another, if they put the item obtainable in-game, then unless the Korean or Chinese versions stripped that content back out they'd suddenly have one of their cash shop items available for free.

(Which I strongly suspect is a scenario that is forbidden in some portion of some contract somewhere with the companies running those regional versions.)

It's not that Square-Enix can do no wrong, in other words. (I'm a healer main; trust me, I can tell you plenty of things they've done wrong.)

It's just that all my own personal experience when I was a game dev and dealt with tradeoffs in what extra content was made, and international publishing weirdness, and whatever else all leads me to think "this is Kind of Complicated" when it comes to this specific area. 'cause I know it was Kind of Complicated when I had to deal with it from the other side of the player/dev divide.

So I'm inclined to cut them some slack on stuff like this.

[Shougun]

I mean, I don't think anyone's saying it couldn't be done?

We must read the argument that it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the cash shop differently :P. To me that says "it couldn't exist if it wasn't for the cash shop", which in some cases yeah actually I 100% think that's true. In the case of the chocobo carriage, Slepnir, or things like a main boss emote, that "couldn't be done" sounds like a copout.

I don't say copout like "HOW DARE YOU", just sounds really bad standing right next to "these things can't be made if it wasn't for the cash shop" when the thing was, figuratively, 25% done or more (say some things require a lot more polish to take from a character to all races, but like Slepnir already worked on all the races before it was sold on the shop, and even if it does take more polish it isn't to say they couldn't do it like what has happened to one of our NPCs).

So I'm inclined to cut them some slack on stuff like this.

That's fine lol.

Even if it was available in game I probably would have used it once or twice, on a personal level the snap means not too much to me since I hardly use emotes anyways XD.

Just on a sense of hearing people talk in absolutes, some people at least, and in a sense arguing against their own favor, always seems a bit funny to me. Like we've Bethesda that'll charge you 25$ for a silly digital item meanwhile we've CD Prokjet that gives you a bunch of DLC for free and then when it charges for something it's quite size-able. There is absolutely a nuance that is avoided when I say this statement (non-nuanced statement incoming), but sometimes it looks like people are begging for companies to be like EA / Activision (at their worst) and then eager to complain about it when they've taught the company to be like that lol. Sometimes it almost looks like an auction war against each other, not here in this thread but I've seen it in general here and on other games lol, where people are like "I'd pay $10 for that!" and another "I'd pay $40!" and the company is sitting there like ". . . .I was going to charge $5.....". Simultaneously we're already getting requests to take other gear and ensure it goes into the shop rather than have it become some sort of meaningful reward.

Obviously in situations where clearly the gear would have NEVER existed without the shop are not accounted for in the above, but there are situations, sometimes, where I actually don't believe people or SE that it couldn't have been in the game without the shop (as they were already partially or more produced in game) and that we shouldn't be trying to act as their accountants anyways, with the scale and business senses that they're using it's a bit mystifying if we pretend we're even adequately equipped to direct their finance "poor SE couldn't afford that mount that was already 35% made in game if it wasn't for the shop, it's a good thing I subsidize them" or "SE makes X$ a month due to this, so therefore they clearly have funds to make what I want" (both made quotes clearly being a bit of a hyperbole / caricature just to be clear, ). Just.. eh.. lol.

Posting from a mix of view points and emotions, mostly being seeing people speak in absolutes or at least appear so unintentionally (huge pet peeve of mine, overconfidence is a sin dangit! lol), and then also that weird bemusement as you see people beg SE to make more opportunities to take their money as if that was a core part of the value of the request (it's not just that they want the item, they 'want' to pay for it too! which isn't a sin but certainly has me reading like "....personally I don't like parting with my money, interesting to read how ready others are to part with theirs" lol).

Besides while I'm not a fan of the shop I do happen to have the bike / odin mount so take everything with a side of salt and a tall glass of hypocrisy .

[MeeDeggiThePunisher]

So many people hard up for $7 but can afford to sub? Ok whatever. Anyway, good emote! Bit surprise we got this so soon tbh.

Disliking cash shops =/= too poor to buy from cash shops.