Quote Originally Posted by IveraIvalice View Post
people keep saying "well ffxi did it" or other mmos have better animations.
Considering they weren't working on Wings of the Goddess from the start to my knowledge, the fact they added a full range of Dance battle animations in a relatively short time (same frame as ARR production time) they could easily knock it out, especially with the team they have employed. Not to mention that they use MoCap for animations to begin with, that alone speeds up the process and takes out a lot of clipping errors from manual design.

Considering 'Standard MMORPGs' doesn't pay much attention to detail like SE tends to, it could just simply be because they want people to feel at home when they move from their MMO to FFXIV, rather than completely stand out from the crowd. The engine can support it because even 1.0 using Crystal Tools you can see the differences in FFXIII/FFXIII-2 battle animations between the characters, so it's more than doable.