Graphical upgrade is great and all that. But... Gameplay ? Animations ? It's Linked.

[SilverObi]

I'd honestly be happy if they gave semi-unique stances and combat animations to each race. FFXI had each race and gender hold their weapons and do weapon skills in varying stances and with tweaks to the base animations to give them variety and in my opinion more life.

[Kolsykol]

A lot of the animations definitely feel a bit stiff.
I went back to Au'Ra and the animations are so much smoother imo than on Highlander and Elezen.
It changes how it feels to play a lot my character kinda just feels more responsive.

[Asaeampan]

7.0 is about 2 years out and you're expecting them to give you all the possible things they will work on this far out when they almost undoubtedly don't have anything to show you yet even if they wanted to? Show a little patience.

[technole]

There are also some limitations with not having a physics engine (like Microsoft's Havok or Nvidia PhysX), as YoshiP mentioned clipping can't be prevented without one, as you need some sort of collision detection to determine things like hair #50 is colliding with that chest piece and model. Imagine real explosions and changes not in a cut scene, or handling real items in NPCs hands instead of empty things. They could sort of 'cheat' by simulating collision and animations calculations, like a template for these scenarios so the client and servers don't have to do complicated math for X amount of players at the same time. That's the main reason why they don't have such an engine, a lot of effort for little benefit but I can imagine once they get past the graphics dev cycle, it could be in a roadmap especially in a 10 year plan and if they really want to blow the lids off and make it a complete FF experience.

[Hyperia]

Updated animations are already making it into the game. When I put away my WHM cane in the new cutscenes or duty complete scene at the end of an instance, it’s a much smoother and more natural animation. It’s not used outside of CS though, I wish it was but not yet.