Alpha First Look: Video 3 - The Black Shroud

[Tupster]

Many others have most likely said this before, but I really dislike the new movement animations. Falling from high distances and landing without even flinching, magically floating in place as the character rotates, and starting and stopping without any momentum. It just looks out of place in an otherwise beautiful and believable setting. I wish they'd just use the old animations.

At least the rotation animation (or lack thereof) is far better than WoW's weird foot shuffling. Every time I catch myself distracted by the rotation I remind myself that at least they aren't doing a weird dance like in WoW. In fact, the foot shuffling and constant jumping are one reason I could never get into WoW.

I'm probably a strange person for feeling this way, but I'd actually decide not to play FF14 if the animation is distracting and bad. Even if there is less animation, like FF11, as long as it all flows together in a believable way, like FF11 and FF14 v1, then great. Constant, nervous, figidity, animation would drive me away.

[Mihen]

I have to agree. I felt while playing FFXIV 1.0 that because the characters were anchored to the ground everything the they did was incredibly well animated because there was no detachment mechanism. The character animations felt like they belonged on the surfaces and there was not an enormous contrast. Very smooth. The last thing I want to see is a few hundred people bouncing around in a zone. Incredibly huge turn off and it makes me feel like the players are separate entities from the world and the floor, ground, zone area is just a make shift stage. I am not against the realism of jumping, tumbling, acrobatics or whatever but it really needs to be handled carefully. Even if I were to jump six times in a row not everyone of them would be 6 Feet off of the floor. Hop, Hurdle, Bounce, Leap...I would keep these in mind when designing jumping mechanics so that the experience doesn't feel out of place from your absolutely gorgeous world.

[Tupster]

Jump jump jump jump jump jump.

Jumping seems to serve almost no purpose except to make me wonder why somebody is jumping. I was going to wait to complain until I saw how nervous players would be, but after seeing the Live Letter and now even this video where the PR rep can't keep from jumping, I must say that I really hate the jumping. It is really distracting. It looks bad (one should jump differently if one is running vs. standing still). It also seems like it will actually be unneeded to actually get anywhere.

The jumping needs to be fixed.

[Edit: I address a lot of criticism later in this thread and a lot of good points were made. I encourage anybody interested in this to read the thread.]

[Linkurrra]

Jump jump jump jump jump jump.

Jumping seems to serve almost no purpose except to make me wonder why somebody is jumping. I was going to wait to complain until I saw how nervous players would be, but after seeing the Live Letter and now even this video where the PR rep can't keep from jumping, I must say that I really hate the jumping. It is really distracting. It looks bad (one should jump differently if one is running vs. standing still). It also seems like it will actually be unneeded to actually get anywhere.

The jumping needs to be fixed.

Well the video did demonstrate that you could jump over the fence in one area. I was quite pleased with this.
Jumping doesn't bother me as much as the lack of momentum in the animations. Plus I would hope that the jumping animation would occasionally switch between 2 styles of jumping, the variety would break up the monotony of jumping.

As for Producer Live video, I am fairly certain they were jumping on purpose! They said they were doing stress testing in Alpha. And having a bunch of ppl on the screen at once and jumping constantly is a very good test for the server.
Doing this creates a huge amount of data from all players currently in the scene that needs to be sent to all players currently in the area! The server did it without a hitch! Alot of times servers will choke with such behavior because they can't keep up with all the player movement happening at the same time at the same place.
When this happens you start seeing lag, characters skip around and animations don't complete correctly. How many of us seen the sliding of characters stuck in the crafting animation, or just instantly teleport to one place to another?

What did concern me about the Producer Live video was how some characters would pop in and out of being visible. I was unsure if it was the client only displaying X amount of characters on the screen, the server having a bit of trouble rendering all the players or updating them, or lastly if it was just players changing equipment.

Now I know gear sets change quite fluidly without hesitation, but it kinda looked the way they were popping that they were changing equipment like in 1.0. *shrugs* Regardless, it still was a impressive amount of ppl on screen at once with no slowdown!

[Aion]

Well the video did demonstrate that you could jump over the fence in one area. I was quite pleased with this.
Jumping doesn't bother me as much as the lack of momentum in the animations. Plus I would hope that the humping animation would occasionally switch between 2 styles of jumping, the variety would break up the monotony of jumping.

As for Producer Live video, I am fairly certain they were jumping on purpose! They said they were doing stress testing in Alpha. And having a bunch of ppl on the screen at once and jumping constantly is a very good test for the server.
Doing this creates a huge amount of data from all players currently in the scene that needs to be sent to all players currently in the area! The server did it without a hitch! Alot of times servers will choke with such behavior because they can't keep up with all the player movement happening at the same time at the same place.
When this happens you start seeing lag, characters skip around and animations don't complete correctly. How many of us seen the sliding of characters stuck in the crafting animation, or just instantly teleport to one place to another?

What did concern me about the Producer Live video was how some characters would pop in and out of being visible. I was unsure if it was the client only displaying X amount of characters on the screen, the server having a bit of trouble rendering all the players or updating them, or lastly if it was just players changing equipment.

Now I know gear sets change quite fluidly without hesitation, but it kinda looked the way they were popping that they were changing equipment like in 1.0. *shrugs* Regardless, it still was a impressive amount of ppl on screen at once with no slowdown!

BOLD

yeah I notice that too. Initially I thought it is because some draw distance, but I saw the video show someone running a bit far from yoshida. Maybe indeed it has limitation on displaying x amount of characters on one spot. Maybe it depends on our rig also. But at least, they pop instantly lol

[Tupster]

BOLD

yeah I notice that too. Initially I thought it is because some draw distance, but I saw the video show someone running a bit far from yoshida. Maybe indeed it has limitation on displaying x amount of characters on one spot. Maybe it depends on our rig also. But at least, they pop instantly lol

It looked to me like it was the client's view changing that caused it. Apparently the server does not send information for players your client cannot see. It might send that data anyway if the number of players is low, but when it gets high it seems like it might only update player data if the camera is pointed in their direction. That means if you spin around 180 degrees nobody would be visible until you get an update from the server and your machine can load everybody up. Obviously that takes a noticeable amount of time, probably even on a really fast computer, due to speed of light communication induced latency (although that should only be a problem for me, not Yoshi P who is practically sitting on top of the servers...).

[Warlock]

BOLD

yeah I notice that too. Initially I thought it is because some draw distance, but I saw the video show someone running a bit far from yoshida. Maybe indeed it has limitation on displaying x amount of characters on one spot. Maybe it depends on our rig also. But at least, they pop instantly lol

My Kingdom for that fluidity in End of an Era live event .
Now @ Tupster seems like you didn't pay attention at the last live letter but there were a LOT of ppl that zoomed into Yoshi-P's view and were turning around on the spot and were doing 1.0's stepping animation.
And another thing ..you don't like jump animation for Miqo'te? tell me how a cat lands on their paws? what's wrong with not almost hitting the ground with your ass when jumping? you don't know how firm their legs are or the gravity of Hydaelin
It's a cool jump like this one:

[Tupster]

Now @ Tupster seems like you didn't pay attention at the last live letter but there were a LOT of ppl that zoomed into Yoshi-P's view and were turning around on the spot and were doing 1.0's stepping animation.
And another thing ..you don't jump animation for Miqo'te? tell me how a cat lands on their paws? what's wrong with not almost hitting the ground with your ass when jumping? you don't know how firm their legs are or the gravity of Hydaelin
It's a cool jump like this one: http://s83.beta.photobucket.com/user...orld2.gif.html

I'm not sure what you mean about not paying attention. I've watched it a couple of times already. Could you be more specific about what I missed? (sincere question) The "shuffling" animation from WoW looks stupid, but the equivalent animation in FFXIV 1.0 was always much better. In the current videos of the alpha however there is no animation at all, the character just skates.

That image is of a standing jump (or landing?). I'm talking about the running jump. I think it would actually be half impossible to jump like that if you are running (and no reason you'd want to).

[Tupster]

Well the video did demonstrate that you could jump over the fence in one area. I was quite pleased with this.

Jumping doesn't bother me as much as the lack of momentum in the animations. Plus I would hope that the humping animation would occasionally switch between 2 styles of jumping, the variety would break up the monotony of jumping.

As for Producer Live video, I am fairly certain they were jumping on purpose! ...

What did concern me about the Producer Live video was how some characters would pop in and out of being visible. ...

Being able to jump over fences is nice. I would like for there to be places you *have* to jump, but they've said before they don't want it to be like an action game so I doubt that.

Having a proper jump animation for a forward leap vs a standing leap would be good.

Hopefully players won't be hyperactive, but waiting until beta to show concern seems like it might be too late.

Jumping would send just a little more data to the server, but I doubt the increase is anywhere near what you'd imagine (I'm a computer scientist and my guess is it isn't much). The point about animation possibly glitching is valid though.

The pop in is inevitable when you snap the mouse around quickly if you do not want to make the server to have to update dozens of players who cannot even be seen by the client at that moment. I can forgive players not appearing immediately if you spin the view quickly and there are dozens of players.

[Nox]

Jump jump jump jump jump jump.

Jumping seems to serve almost no purpose except to make me wonder why somebody is jumping. I was going to wait to complain until I saw how nervous players would be, but after seeing the Live Letter and now even this video where the PR rep can't keep from jumping, I must say that I really hate the jumping. It is really distracting. It looks bad (one should jump differently if one is running vs. standing still). It also seems like it will actually be unneeded to actually get anywhere.

The jumping needs to be fixed.

too bad jumping is here to stay. Has it occurred to you that this is what they want? the devs I mean, to show off that it's finally got a feature that is an MMO STANDARD. Seriously, get over it. Jumping is here to stay, and it makes the game much more appealing to me and to many other people. You wanna see real jumping? Go outside and look at your friends jump, or take a video of you jumping and loop it as you are in awe by how realistic the jump is. This is a game, We play it to have fun, it doesn't have to be realistic to the point its boring as hell (hello 1.0).

Anyway, Great video. I love the art style, I love the music, I love how amazing this game looks, And I can't stop showing this awesome stuff to my friends. Well done SE, Keep impressing me, and really all of us. Again, Yoshi P you are awesome