General Animation: What are your thoughts?

[Pandemonium]

I am a self-confessed bit of an FF 'White-knight', overall I am enjoying what I consider to be a generally great success, and a vast improvement on 1.0 However, I just do not 'feel' the animation. I've been here since Alpha/Beta and i've read and participated in all of the relevant threads on this, but now it is release time. I wonder if I am alone in how I feel about the animation at present?

Allow me to explain further my feelings:

- My main is a Mithra, and while the character animation itself is all nice and pretty, the inertia of the movement in all directions does not flow well for me.

- I use a Keyboard/Mouse combo, and even with 'mouse movement sensitivity' cranked up to max, i find the turning circles to be still quite wide and sluggish.

- I rolled a Lallafell due to my main world being full, then deleted the toon after 5 minutes of running (read: sliding) around.

- There is no inertia, or fluidity with turning/stopping/moving.

- Strafing left/right seems to 'slide' around on the floor instead of 'stepping/running'

- Mounts - My coeurl, the model looks so incredible and awesome, but the animation of it running just seems be out of sink. I looks like a fat cat trying to run on a slippery surface, i.e. it's legs are moving to fast for the pace of the movement it is actually making (NB: This is NOT a call to speed up the mount, just fix the animation)
- - The chocobo looks great - I have no Goobue, or access to Ahriman yet.


If I am alone in this, then I will learn to live with it and continue enjoying the game. If, however, others feel that the animation could do better, then please leave your thoughts also. Afterall, this is SE and they certainly have the ability to create incredible, realistic and immersive animation (see: Every FF game and CGI sequence ever)!

EDIT:: Should mention I am a high-end PC user.

[LithiumFlower]

Hmmmm. I've only played Hyur females so far, both as casters and melee, and haven't noticed the things you're mentioning. I haven't ridden a chocobo at all though so that's something I can't comment on.

I use mouse/keyboard as well and have not found any issues with the turning speed (I didn't make any adjustments) and I'm the type that tends to notice slow turning right away in any MMOs I play because it drives me nuts. In fact I have to say that as far as movement goes I've been pretty happy with the game because it does a lot of little things the way I like them, like automatically stopping my character from a run if I click on a quest giver.

I don't discount your experience at all, but I'm wondering if there is some other factor(s) at play. Granted, there's a lot I can't see in my character animations because attacks in this game are so "flashy." (^_^)

[MistressAthena]

I agree, the FFXIV 1.0 animations were so far superior. It's like comparing a 2 yr olds drawing to a famous artists. The fact Yoshi said they wouldn't be doing anything about this, removing all of these great animation features, but then implementing ones which didn't exist, just doesn't make sense to me.

The fact your mouth moves when you type is a fascinating feature. The fact you can put the visor up and down on your helmet now is also one. The weather effects are marvelous on your characters.. So why remove all of the amazing animations from 1.0? Makes absolutely no sense...

[ForteXX]

Main thing I've noticed that looks odd is if you use A or D to turn, the character steps, but right mouse click to turn makes you slide.

[Jinketsu]

I find it very endearing that the monsters and other players on the PS3 look like they're moving claymation style, but other than that bit of cuteness I think everything is fine when on PC.

[seikenflash]

I'm on ps3 and I have no issues with 'sliding' or stiff movements everything is so fluid and awesome, now other PC's do the 'claymation' movement as mentioned above, but it might me due to me turning off effects and such for PC's not in my party, if they are in my party for dungeons or fate grinds, they move as fluid as I do. All in all I love the animations, especially they new monk animations I freaking love how pug/monk fight now, no more overhead right hook for all my moves lol, he actually does martial arts this time around, simply beautiful

[MistyMew]

the only thing i am not too keen on are the mount run animations.

the mounts look awsome, i like them all!

but when running they appear quite choppy, they definately should redo that part of them, the run animations of mobs when they chase you...character run animations are just fine but the mounts are quite...."stop go'ish" .

i am sure animations are very icky to do, but extra effort in them would really make using the mounts smooth, fluid ,as they should be imo.

[Ryuujin]

As an animator myself, I understand that there are most likely technical reasons why the animations look choppy. Most likely due to server syncing. The animation of the Coeurl Mount looks weird cause they are balancing it to keep the speed in line with the chocobo. The problem with that is you have a creature that size should move MUCH faster.

[RethDaron]

Like someone above said, 1.0 had better animations by far - you had to play it to get the feeling your character had, like they had a weight to them.

Yoshi-P even addressed the lack of quality compared to 1.0 and said it won't return.

[Gramul]

Could be better.
I miss the look of 1.0. They where so smooth and natural.