[MSQ Feedback] (7.3 SPOILERS) Feedback on the post-trial cutscene

[Kenji_Shiratsuki]

Hi everyone, first time posting here in ages. I had to follow my own advice and come here to give the developers a nudge regarding the scene that plays after defeating Necron, where your Warrior of Light blows up the memory bank. I have watched every version of that CS (and made a video compilation of them if anyone wants to as well!) and I have some suggestions.

First of all, since it's been so kindly pointed out to me that I forgot to explicitly state this: I loved this scene, and I'm really happy it exists. Developers, great job. It was really cool in the moment, but looking at them all strung together like this, it's hard not to imagine them being more distinct and having more job flavor. I know that it would be a lot of work to do a custom animation for each job, but if you used assets already in the game, just like the scene already does, you could still make it feel more special. Yes, our equipped weapon influences how we do an attack, this is an evolution from where we just drop it during the Zenos fight and punch him a bunch. It could still be more, and for minimal* effort.

For example:

Paladin could "cast" a spell to imbue their blade with aether and then run up to attack. Just perform the casting animation and do a big Blade of Light glow on the sword.

Black Mage could charge up and fire a Flare Star instead of a generic aether bolt.

Dancer should definitely have thrown the chakrams...That one actually felt kinda bad.

Machinist could have their little bots from the third part of their combo come out to also fire aether blasts.

Summoner could have had the wings from Terraflare come out and fire the Deathflare blast, just sideways instead of down like the normal animation.

Possibly the easiest one to do would be Gunbreaker, just as they jump up to do the strike, turn on the Blasting Zone animation on their weapon so the beam reaches way up. That's one effect, it should* be easy to just turn that on and suddenly it's a very different feel.

Developers: PLEASE do more of this kind of thing. When you do, please consider how many assets you already have made and how they can be repurposed for quick and easy payoff for the players, making us feel immersed in the world, making us feel our choice of job for that scene truly mattered. I love things that are job-specific, like being able to be the ones who heal someone ourselves if we have healing magicks, or block an attack in a CS instead of an NPC because we're on a tank job. I don't know about everyone else, but for me personally, there is no better way to get myself immersed in the game and emotional than to make me feel like I'm making a difference, like my choices matter.

The aforementioned video: https://youtu.be/cQb-iJCK0bc

*I am not a developer of games YET and I don't know how this works for this game but I assume it's far easier to string together or turn on effects already present in the game than make something from scratch. Possibly something that could be done with only a few hours more work than the scene already took.

[Carin-Eri]

Dancer should definitely have thrown the chakrams...That one actually felt kinda bad.

Disagree regarding Dancer. The whole point of Dancer is movement and I absolutely LOVED that we used our Chakrams that way!

I, for one, really enjoyed seeing my character sprinting, Naruto style, toward the memory bank!

[Kenji_Shiratsuki]

Fair, I just felt that a class based on throwing things should...throw them. I mean, even running up to get a clean shot, then throwing would have been better but probably more work/custom animation.

[Velaneth]

It's fine. There's a ton of classes, most people aren't going to watch all of them, and doing a bunch of extra stuff for a few seconds in one cutscene when more classes will come in the future is just asking for pain. Having a few set things and using stock animations lets this be future-proof.

My only complaint is that RDM should use the melee one since they have a sword. :P

I haven't seen anyone post them yet but yes the cutscene even handles wand/shield BLM and WHM.

[Pimsan20]

I honestly hope we get more scenes like with with our WoL doing something in cutscenes then standing there.

[AmiableApkallu]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the part where the WoL shields Sphene. That was a missed opportunity to draw inspiration from PLD's Passage of Arms, AST's Collective Unconscious, SGE's Haima, etc.

Overall, though, I do appreciate the effort that was put into the cinematics/cutscenes.

[PorxiesRCute]

The only complaint I have is that if you take off your job stone and watch the cutscene as a Conjurer, you still cast Glare instead of Stone. Conjurers can't even learn Glare!

(CNJ/WHM and THM/BLM with a one-handed weapon and shield ALSO use the shield to protect Sphene, whereas a Paladin without a shield just uses their sword, which is pretty cool.)