Character animations

[Roaran]

Ok. For the record. I want to say that for all the people who are saying,
"Oh it's just alpha footage, it will get better."

Are you serious? This argument was used all along during the beta process of FFXIV, and many of those things we complained about still have yet to change.

I'm sorry, but at several points in the new footage, the animation was total garbage. I thought the video was great and I am excited, but the game doesn't get better when we accept the terd sandwich.

[Jennestia]

Ok. For the record. I want to say that for all the people who are saying,
"Oh it's just alpha footage, it will get better."

Are you serious?

Because logically games and products improve from Alpha > RTM.

[Alerith]

Because logically games and products improve from Alpha > RTM.

This.

The noticeable change you get from Pre-Alpha/Alpha to Beta is drastically larger than the noticeable difference you get from Beta to full release.

[_pops]

This is what I've been saying since the Gamescom demo and I got crap for it too. As others have pointed out, I too felt that the characters have lost their "weight" when it came to animations. However, I do hope that this will somehow be adjusted later, preferably during beta.

Also, is it just me, or the male Miqo'te in the video pretty much has the exact same battle stance as midland Hyur and then some?

[Dannythm]

I think that's a great idea.
Would stop the animation lock problem while still maintaining the beautiful and realistic movements most came to like on their characters
Maybe I'm the only person who feels this way but seeing the new trailer shocked me a bit - seeing the characters move as unnatural as they do in other MMORPGs felt horrible.
It was a "Oh, so FFXIV is becoming the SAME as them"-feeling. Characters having actual weight was one of the little things which made me go back to FFXIV over the past 2 years whenever I tried out other MMOs because it gave me the feeling of really being IN this game not just moving around a few pixels.
But I totally understand that others don't appreciate that as much as I do so Danny's idea would provide a great way of making both groups of people happy

Thanks! I thought nobody would read/like my idea =P. I really think it would be possible to do it just by adding a few animations to each job/race whatever and including the code on where they are viable to activate.

But we don't know if SE has anything planned on this regard, I mean they said hey will get away with the animation lock, but they didn't say how they are doing that. I hope it's not just making it feel like any other MMO out there.... that would felt terrible for this game.

We will have to wait and see.

[bobbygunz]

Guild Wars 2 has stop/slow-down running animations, so there's no reason SE had to remove them. Aren't they supposed to be "bringing it up to standard", anyway?

[Webster]

Was anything mentioned in the ff25 presentation in regards to the change in animation? I would also be interested what ppl are saying on the Japanese side...

[FireBud]

Looks more to me like they haven't got the blending down on the animations more then anything, it's one thing that guildwars 2 nails really well which makes every action you make the character do transition into the next almost seamlessly without the action lock that plagues FFXIV currently.

This is something they can tweak certainly, it's not a hard thing to do and really just comes down to the animators getting animation timings right so you can keep that fluidity of motion on the characters.

However I'm a gameplay over graphics man so I'm not to phased on the stop/start nature shown in the trailer.

[Artiss2k]

To me the battle animations were pretty awesome, the movement ones though were kinda weird sometimes and did look more weightless, and is it just me or is the lalafell run animation different? the legs didn't look to be moving as fast lol.

[Kiote]

Personally, I hate it in a game where you Press S out of Combat and your character walks backwards. It looks stupid. You should be able to turn around and face the camera while moving.

That said, I'm pretty sure Yoshida said in an interview that this was Toggle-able.