Underwater Graphical Update

[Erin1491]

Square enix and some simpleton players have a fear of underwater combat when in reality you don't need to actually swim to fight; Link has shown us this reality in the Zelda games. Sea floor would be where all the enemies are; anything above it would be like the "flying" section of the underwater zone.

Let us fight in environments like this


I state it again; you don't need to create swimming battle animations; just ground player characters and enemies to the seafloor, that's it. Just create enough environment around the ground floor.

This is a neat idea and we only get a small glimpse of it in the tempest area, without water of course. The idea of fighting on the sea floor is nothing new either to final fantasy. Exploring the ocean and fighting underwater in FF3 was always very fun

[TheMightyMollusk]

Giving me flashbacks to Vashj'ir in WoW.

Wonder if they ever fixed that final quest. Used to bug out all the time.

[Shougun]

I'd like to see more underwater content / visuals. The visuals is low on the list given the lack of content, so they seem to go hand in hand as desires lol. Personally if we're talking water I'd like to see the 'top' of the water focused on especially. Get us better water shaders . Give oceans actual 3d waves and such.

GW2 combat, imo, underwater is fun, but there might be reasons why they rarely use it.. I don't play enough to say why, just know that I thought it was nifty. Given they use a loading screen, which is fine, having fights not on the floor of the water would probably be a nuisance though so I think we're stuck there.

[Merrigan]

It's a feature I'd like to see implemented. For my part, I was rather disappointed by the treatment of the underwater areas, which fell far short of those in WOW. In general, they're pretty ugly, empty and boring. Even the graphics are very uninspired, which is odd given the almost infinite design possibilities offered by the sea. Where are the immense ruins, underwater palaces and wrecks where treasure can be found?

There must be technical reasons for this, in terms of combat implementation / vertical axis management for creature movement. For combat, we could simply imagine special actions that would resolve a few rp concerns (indeed, an arrow in the water shouldn't hit its target), in Bozja's style? Maybe that's a bit greedy.

[Iscah]

... the almost infinite design possibilities offered by the sea. Where are the immense ruins, underwater palaces and wrecks where treasure can be found?

While there are "infinite possibilities" across all the games that could possibly be made, that doesn't mean this game is built to be able to utilise them. What good would a "wreck filled with treasure" be in a game that doesn't have treasure chests in its overworld?

We've had a ship graveyard, we've had ancient ruins that happen to be very Art Deco, other ancient ruins that were definitely underwater and full of gold, and a literal undersea palace in Japanese style. None of the undersea locations are physically filled with water because the game doesn't do water physics, but they're still the same locations that would probably get designed if we could swim there.