People are doing crazy things with VFX Editor

[Grinning Serpent]

It's a mod I never really looked into very much because it seemed more complicated to fiddle with than most, but I was always vaguely aware of people doing goofy things with it - I remember one of the guys in my static added Gundam animations to his Summoner alt. But apparently some folks are doing "total overhaul" type stuff and it really shows how lacking a lot of skills and abilities are in terms of being kept up to date in visuals and sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snxfJ2tB3qg

PLD is one of the worst classes when it comes to weak animations and limp sound effects, and this is a good example of what could be done for them. I'm not sure about the multi-hit thing going on here - I'm guessing it's client side only and just dividing the actual damage by X number of hits? Maybe it's something that could be toggled? I'm mostly impressed by how much better the core 1-2-3 combo looks and sounds (and Holy Spirit.) Considering we spend 40-80ish sec at a time just doing our 1-2-3's and occasional 4's on most classes (especially tanks), you'd think they'd want to prioritize improving the sounds and visuals of those skills. I also liked that the altered idle animation for the classic PLD is *slightly* more realistic than the vanilla one - in general, you want your sword pointing at the target!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ4-CU-G4y4

I also came across this one. I think I'm with a lot of folks in not really enjoying the transition from Rogue -> Naruto, and would have preferred Rogue -> Thief instead. Not sure what my ideal Thief would look like (I suspect it would look a lot like Viper, frankly) but this is much closer than we got with the Naruto ninja.

Some very obvious Zidane references, particularly in the animations. The idle animation looks like Zidane's animation by way of reusing the vanilla Monk idle animation. It looks a little janky, but there's plenty of janky animations in the game if you're looking for them - BLU sprinting animation really stands out. Once again, the core combo animations are markedly improved over vanilla.


I'd love it if "ability glamouring" was a thing in the game. It would add a completely new path to the reward structures, too. I do understand that this would be more complicated for SE to do than for end-users to do, as all animations would need to be rendered for all players instead of just the client, and that would play into how much data is transmitted between the servers and clients. I do think it's a line that they ought to consider for 8.0, though.

[PenguinChan]

I’d love to see them experiment more with camera hit punching, camera effects, animation hitstops, and dynamic damage numbers. Sadly I don’t think we’ll see damage drag animations (Ones that slow you down for added visual effect). People already hated animation locks, even if I personally think it looks and feels better than it being crack cocaine speed. Currently you can download mods that takes your total damage of a skill and can separate it out to as many hits as you want, with delays and intensity — adding back up to that initial value.

There certainly is room to grow for the visual feedback of XIV (WoW does this better in some areas, others not so much). The whole 2.2 - 2.5sec GCD allows for a lot more animation nuance. However most of this is unlikely for dawntrail outside of maybe the damage numbers veering off / multi-hit since that’d be the easiest change of them all.

Maybe the new classes will have some higher level quality animations we haven’t seen yet?

[Grinning Serpent]

Currently you can download mods that takes your total damage of a skill and can separate it out to as many hits as you want, with delays and intensity — adding back up to that initial value.

Yeah, I'm guessing that's what the PLD mod is doing since several of the skills are multi-hits. It just gets the damage value from the server and then evenly divides it among however many cosmetic hits are being generated?

And yeah obviously nothing like this would be possible for DT - they'd have been advertising it long before this point if it were going to be part of the expansion. But maybe it's something they could consider with 8.0? I do think they need to do work on class design in general, but you can do a lot with just revamping visuals and SFX. Good hit registration, feedback, etc can go so far in making a game go from bland to exciting.

Darkest Dungeon is a great example of this, if you're familiar. In terms of actual gameplay mechanics it's just one of a great many FF-style turn-based RPGs. But the *presentation* of it all makes it go from something that would probably be rather bland on a typical RPG Maker design and turned it into an indie smash hit. The game's mechanics aren't anything special - but the presentation is, and that makes all the difference.

[PenguinChan]

Yeah, I'm guessing that's what the PLD mod is doing since several of the skills are multi-hits. It just gets the damage value from the server and then evenly divides it among however many cosmetic hits are being generated?

Yeah, it takes the damage value given by the server and divides it up to whatever amount you detail within the plugin. You can tell it how many times and when each tick will hit, all done manually by the modder (You as the player can do it to any skill that's non-modded too, if it's a multi-hit visual skill and want it to feel better to press.)

And yeah obviously nothing like this would be possible for DT - they'd have been advertising it long before this point if it were going to be part of the expansion. But maybe it's something they could consider with 8.0? I do think they need to do work on class design in general, but you can do a lot with just revamping visuals and SFX. Good hit registration, feedback, etc can go so far in making a game go from bland to exciting.

Darkest Dungeon is a great example of this, if you're familiar. In terms of actual gameplay mechanics it's just one of a great many FF-style turn-based RPGs. But the *presentation* of it all makes it go from something that would probably be rather bland on a typical RPG Maker design and turned it into an indie smash hit. The game's mechanics aren't anything special - but the presentation is, and that makes all the difference.

Well, FWIW they do end up adding in new VFX and animations over time to classes every expansion. Some stay the same while others get new variants that bring it inline with other jobs or the job fantasy itself. Now that most jobs have been reworked I assume it's incremental work from here on out, besides new classes.