The VFX issue

[Josh_the_Human]

I hope I don't come off as ingrate but I really wanted to make this. Everytime I'm enjoying FFXIV, I start getting really nitpicky with stuff and get frustrated with it. A lot of cosmetic stuff like character idle slouch pose, the way capes stick to your characters legs and turn into robes or how the backside of shields look.

The one thing that bugs me the most however is action VFX. They don't look bad, but in my opinion they're a big annoyance on both a practical and a superficial side.

Let's take a look at Samurai. When you play it, you expect cool sword martial arts. The reality is that you're gonna summon ice, moon PNGs and cherry blossoms petals. Next is Paladin - instead of swordplay you summon rainbows and snowflakes. Machinist - there's weird giant homing bullets, alien tech and space lasers, yet the job lore is supposed to be Ishgardian magitek.
There's also the minor issue of themeing and colours. Jobs that have a very prominent theme to them like Dark Knight and Reaper discourage some of using them because of it. I love 2 handed swords in video games, but if I want to use them I need to be swinging black shadows and summoning demonic claws and lasers. If you wanna glam a DRK, you could make the coolest look ever, if it doesn't fit with black and red VFX its gonna look bad during gameplay. One of the consequences of this is that even NPCs wielding 2-hand swords are forced to use those same VFX because of their animations.
Finally, there's the practical side of all this. I cannot comprehend what's going on during raids - sometimes even dungeons without turning other player's VFX, which is a big shame because the animation themselves look bland and incomplete without any.

Those would all be fine if these VFX weren't the main actions in a rotation! Seeing ice magic during Sam gameplay would be much cooler if you had to work for it. What convinced me to make this thread is after seeing on YouTube DRK PLD and WAR's old removed job actions. They're cool sword, shield and axe swinging animations that feel grounded, and imagining a 32 man raid with those you could probably see what's going on.

It's a really big endeavor that probably won't ever happen, but man I wish actions would be reanimated to be less flashy, but still satisfying to look at. Other MMOs like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 are doing this. Final Fantasy XII, whose artstyle is similar to this game, also makes it work with even less VFX! I'm really not saying VFX bad, they just gotta be neutered a bit in my opinion.

[LilimoLimomo]

Most games intentionally design the game's mechanics and the VFX in harmony so that they complement each other. FF14 is one of the rare games that doesn't seem to have put much thought into that, instead just suggesting that players who can't see through the ocean of noise turn VFX off. It's a less than elegant design choice, as evidenced by the fact that for many players disabling part of the aesthetic experience of the game makes it more playable.

[Valence]

In my opinion it's the art and marketing teams finding themselves into an unholy alliance where they decided that showing insanely flashy visuals sell well (they probably do, just watch people reactions at job trailers). Then when you actually get to deal with them ingame they become a a huge detriment visually.

They used to be more grounded in earlier expansions since at every new expansion it's like they're trying constantly to push the bar further and outdo themselves, but let's be honest, bosses were already gigantic discoballs no matter what due to spellcasters.

[Bun_Vivant]

I recently turned the combat VFX back on. As a SGE main, it makes the fights far more engaging if I have to pay close enough attention to see the telegraphs through all the visual clutter. Plus I can more readily see what everyone else is doing, at least on the classes I've played myself.

So I think it's nice the SE gave us the choice, on a fight-by-fight basis, of whether to have the flashy but cluttering effects or not.

[AmiableApkallu]

I wonder how much of this VFX issue is tied up in the fact that boss hitboxes are sometimes so large that melee-range jobs are able to stand out in Narnia and still hit the thing. How exactly do you animate a sword strike when the boss isn't actually in range of your sword? (No one be crazy and suggest that hitboxes should actually match the size of the things being hit...)

[rawker]

Just look at EW SMN, very flashy but boring to execute.

[OliviaLugria]

But but... I'm very in favor of shrinking hit boxes. I'm talking like 75%-90% reduction.

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

A lot of cosmetic stuff like character idle slouch pose, the way capes stick to your characters legs and turn into robes or how the backside of shields look.

So this bit is actually a reasonable technical limitation - you can't quite put granular chains of "bones" to fake the billowing effect past the waist without having diminishing returns/bugs/performance issues, but more importantly, real-time hair and cloth simulation is very taxing on performance, and this was even more true back in 2011 when all this stuff was made. Skyrim came out that same year and everyone's hair looks awful in that by today's standards, and all its clothing tends to share the same basic designs (eg heavy armors, light armors, robes, clothing) to hide the limitations of their rigging. We're just seeing it really hard right now because they decided to add a bunch of pieces with capes in Endwalker...I'm really hoping it's because they were anticipating being able to fix these limitations in the upcoming update.

Let's take a look at Samurai. When you play it, you expect cool sword martial arts. The reality is that you're gonna summon ice, moon PNGs and cherry blossoms petals. Next is Paladin - instead of swordplay you summon rainbows and snowflakes.

I don't disagree but at the same time, 1.) cool swordplay usually requires your opponent to also have a sword, and 2.) the animators have to be careful to not make your animations too long. This game thankfully doesn't have an animation lock (eg you are actively prevented from doing another attack until the anim for the current one finishes) but at the same time it'd look hilarious, and also be a waste of resources, to make these fantastic animations that you will never see more than 1s tops of because you need to queue up your next attack. And then if you take away VFX, it doesn't quite feel like you're doing anything? It's one of the problems I have with existing attacks rn, DRG's Piercing Talon has a distinctive visual sound but "looks" weak for someone throwing a spear to kill someone, and a good amount of MNK's attacks just don't....pack a huge punch (yes you may now kill me) because they are so understated - like, I'm sure their anims are great but also I have the camera pulled back so I can see what I'm doing and I'm usually not looking at my character, so the only real way I know I'm punching something is audio cues and the stance changing.

But along those lines, it has and continues to bug the hell out of me that we just have far too many anims that don't have running variants. MCH has one in its main rotation before a certain level and SCH has several too. Literally the only class in this game that isn't running 24/7 is BLM, so why on earth are there still skill animations that have you sliding along the floor with your legs stock still?

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

I cannot believe I hit the character limit LMAO, I can't even believe it's only 4k characters!

anyway,

Machinist - there's weird giant homing bullets, alien tech and space lasers, yet the job lore is supposed to be Ishgardian magitek.

YES it drives me absolutely nuts that somehow they still haven't worked out wtf Machinist is! At this point my Big Wishlist Item is to drop the pretense and just make it Ishgardian Trigun*. Or Black Lagoon. Or Devil May Cry. You know, those animes/games where the creators clearly love weapons and being stylish with them. It just feels way too inconsistent.

*very tempted to just make a Vash glam for MCH at this point too lol

They're cool sword, shield and axe swinging animations that feel grounded, and imagining a 32 man raid with those you could probably see what's going on.

actually like now that you mention it, it's weird how super good some of the anims are in the game too alongside others that are less impressive. RDM has some fantastic melee attack animations (the like, flip jump you do during Engagement, the actual flip you do during Contre Sixte, the cool...rapier.....swirl thing you do in Resolution) and a good amount of DRG's (piercing talon aside) are great too. Even weirder: RDM is newer while most of DRG's are older. Though, as I complained in another thread, DRG's effects feel a little too threadbare to me, while RDM I feel nails the balance between flashy VFX and great anims.