What do you think of jobs having different stances than classes?

[bobbygunz]

If the races don't look unique through animations in 2.0, and we're stuck with the same ugly shit, I'll be disappointed.

Yeah, FFXIV sure is ugly...?

There's only so many ways someone can swing an axe... it's kind of excessive to add hundreds of different animations for every race, one for each axe-swing etc.

They need to add more casting animations though.

[Radnar]

Yeah, FFXIV sure is ugly...?

Well... I mean... Yeah, it kind of is. Having an engine that is capable of rendering high poly-counts doesn't mean anything if you don't do anything interesting with said polycounts.

Asking for unique animations for the races is not as unreasonable as you're making it out to be. Every single MMO I've played (starting with FFXI) has been able to pull it off with flying colors, so why should we give SE a free pass now for FFXIV? On paper unique animations might not sound "necessary," but the fact that my character looks almost indistinguishably the same animation-wise from a hyur or elzen when wielding a sword and shield adds dramatically to FFXIV's feel of blandness and homogeneity that people so often complain about. If SE wants to address this feel then they need to address the animations with something other than more emotes. I may not have liked the Mithran sword&board animations in FFXI very much, but I would much rather have them back in FFXIV just so my character would feel and look more different from the other races.

[IveraIvalice]

Well... I mean... Yeah, it kind of is. Having an engine that is capable of rendering high poly-counts doesn't mean anything if you don't do anything interesting with said polycounts.

lol this game is much better with its graphics then most mmos i've seen, not to mention their animations are very realistic, sure it would be better with more variation but that doesnt make a game ugly.
really? is that how it is? screw the high detail in the characters and the enemies, screw the environments and time they put into the graphics, if theres no race specific casting then the whole game is ugly

i would agree with you that it would be cool to have that variation and it could only help.
but that little thing is not a pretty and ugly decider for me, come on now

[snowstriker]

Not what I wanted to hear. The game already has more emotes than I could ever imagine using, much less use practically. I would much rather see the animations I see and use every day have a unique feel that helps separate the races from eachother. The races in FFXIV already feel way too homogenous, and adding more emotes will not change that.

FFXI did a masterful job of making each race look and feel special through unique animation and game lore. I was really hoping we would be seeing more of that in 2.0.

This. So hard. I rarely use emotes and when I do it's because I'm sitting around with LS mates waiting for someone to come back from AFK and that's it.

If you are gonna be adamant about not diversifying battle animations between races, please at least when you add new Roegadyn emotes make them manly and rugged. A lot of their emotes make me sick with how "lol big guy looking like a softy" they are :/

And my god give us back Galka's psych, the chipmunk face my Roegadyn makes during /psych is scary.

[Yucie]

Realistic animations only do so much. And the game's 'realism' pretty much went out the window with Tanaka's going.. so..

As previously stated by multiple people in this thread, if you took a look at FFXI it does an AMAZING job of separating the races and making each look unique through a handful of good emotes, and the rest focusing on battle animations, as well as casting animations.

I'm not asking for hundreds or thousands of different animations - I'm asking simply for a handful of good ones, that separate each race and make them unique, while making battle and spellcasting a little less boring.

- The spellcasting animation is pretty much the same for each race, with very minute differents ~ look down, hold your first to your face and eat it while casting.
- For some races, polearms and great axes share the same pool of animations.. which are boring. Combat should be a tad flashy, especially since we don't have too much control over it directly.
- They made unique weapon skill animations that, for these skills, none of the assets are shared for use in other skills. Why can't they do this with some racial or gender animations?

It's not a lot to ask. My hume feels boring every time I'm doing something on PLD, or DRG.

Make it better, SE. Learn from FFXI.

[Sabaku_Usagi]

I just hope they fix the /dance and other stupid emotes... Like really? How graceless does my character have to look?

[Hulan]

This all ties back to something I have noticed about Yoshi-P as a director. I love basically everything that they have done in the last year, and while I'm not the type of person to get overly excited about things, I am very much interested in seeing how ARR turns out. That being said, for better or worse, Yoshi-P very, very much loves patterns. I'm not positive what his background is, but I'm tempted to guess he has at the very least had a lot of exposure to computer science principles, because they come out in spades in his game direction.

Everything they've done in the last year has been about encapsulation and re usability. Every class gets abilities at the same level, of the same category. Job quests are structured the same, and story aside, play out almost identically from a purely game-play perspective. Primals follow the same progression (okay, sample size is small here, but still); same with dungeons.

Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it certainly makes producing large amounts of content quickly much easier. In addition, it also makes things easier to understand for new players, it's formulaic. By the same token, that very formulaic nature makes it stagnant. This is just another example of that formulaic nature coming through. I very much hope that we will see the dev team take more chances in ARR.

As many people have said: it's the big things that draw you in, but it's the little things that keep you around. Little racial/class qwirks are part of what make a good MMO great. Similarly, you can't say that it would take too many resources. It would take the same resources they are already using to produce more race specific emotes. You don't need 7 different animations for every WS, but at least a different idle stance, a slightly different style of Auto-attack.

[Eclipse]

As title says.

Currently Classes and Jobs have the same animations, same attack patterns and motions so what would you guys think if they were spiced up a bit with new animations?


A Pugilist is a boxer he relies entirely on his hands and the old fighting animations had alot of jabs in the melee cycles that I think SE removed in favor of the current animations where the punches are focused. SE could simply put back the jabs and use the current fighting stance.

Monk could get a more Martial arts-eque stance and use the current animations where attacks seems to have a lot of force behind them.



Paladin could get a refined stance that shows that they're refined knights and not simple gladiators.



In the 2.0/ARR Screens we see Black Mage getting new casting animation that's alot more fitting than the simple one we have now and thats a step in the right direction now they just need to give WHM a better stance and I think they're set.




So what do you guys think?


PS: This is in not a petition or a request, I'm just amusing myself and would honestly be surprised if SE implemented anything close to what I'm talking about.


Extra:

I believe that the devs took a lot of shortcuts with animations in XIV that they didn't in XI and while I excuse this in 1.0 since the game was rushed and they had to focus else where while trying to fix it after it flopped, I can't excuse them for taking any more once ARR hits. The pray emote was disappointing for me because while it was supposed to be an XI throwback, they failed to recreate the animation and instead copied them for some races (check miqote pray vs Mithra /heal) note that they did great on other emotes but I would rather they don't take any more shortcuts on polishing the game.

FFXI Animations differed greatly between jobs and races.



Notice how the elvaan(Elezen) and the Hume(Hyur) casting black magic are alot different and unique.

This applies to weaponskills too, the animation changed for each race and gender.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH7PY6YjMSY



Its impossible not to compare XI to XIV, and I just can't help but expect from XIV to do everything XI did and do it better.

Am I being unreasonable?

I think this is a good idea. I would love to see this in XIV and miss this quality and diversity of game play.

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I also miss casting and having my armor flow around me as well. Can we please have our armor reflect our casting, instead of casting just having a visual presence but allowing for also a physical presence.

[Nuru]

yeah let the mages take their weapon out too instead of just standing there

I believe there is a button for that. :P

[Caedeia]

Tailored animations sound like a wonderful idea, I really think differentiating the races more would be a good thing. However, I don't think they could ever satisfy everyone. Our characters take on a personality of their own, even though we may have chosen the same race. I'm sure someone playing a gentle giant Roegadyn wouldn't be happy if his animations suddenly became aggressive and macho, or someone playing a wild Miqo'te frustrated that they're stuck with girly mannerisms featuring no aggression at all. The only solution would be allowing us optional animations to further customize our characters with, and I can understand how that's a bit impossible at this stage of development. I am delighted to see the community team taking interest in suggestions like these, even if the final word from the animation crew wasn't what you wanted to hear. It's better than false promises that fail to deliver, for sure.