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.
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:
*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.
Continue reading...
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:
*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.
Continue reading...