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

[Yucie]

Because it takes weeks to create just one of those animations(not including implementation and testing), they cost a fortune, and To actually think up 10 variations of a single skill 180 times is next to impossible.

FFXI probably has that many skills and spells, if not more. A lot of the skills in XIV run off the same base animation - Fast Blade, and several others for example, including Phalanx, are all a sort of spin-around-backhand animation, except with weapon in hand. But, FFXI still manages to make the races unique. Why? Here's how:

Each weapon has.. I don't know.. 3-4 different AA animations that loop and work together seamlessly when they need to.
Weapon skills utilize these recycled animations, accompanied by different visual effects and sounds.
An idle stance and a handful of auto-attack animations that can be used for WS animations isn't that much.

Abilities. Each race has literally one way they use a skill, but each animation per race and per gender is unique. These are only segregated by names and visual effects.

Casting. Each race has a different blue magic, white magic, black magic, ninjutsu, and song casting animation. Other than that, the spells that fall under each category are separated by, again, visual effects.

FFXIV could easily replicate this, and it'd be far easier to come up with new visual effects than making an entirely new animation from scratch.

FFXI did it. So can FFXIV.

[Kiote]

FFXI did it. So can FFXIV.

FFXI was in development for 6 years.

FFXIV has been in development for 1.5 years and they are rebuilding the entire game right down to the server hardware..

Also, a massive number of XI's skills were repeats of other skills. There were actually very few Different animations. They did the same trick as most current MMOs. They used the same animation and added a different light.

[Yucie]

FFXI was in development for 6 years.

FFXIV has been in development for 1.5 years and they are rebuilding the entire game right down to the server hardware..

That doesn't change the fact that it CAN be done.

[Kiote]

That doesn't change the fact that it CAN be done.

In 5 years for 0 gain at the cost of Content.