Comments from the Devs

[Lucavi]

how the hell did i miss that

Watch his rifle animation. He has it slung on his shoulder while walking with it out, and he holds and fires it with one arm just like Male Elvaans.

@Mioko: You aren't making shit up. I remember reading the same thing years ago. I'm sure there are more animations that are linked (I think Vaan has some with sword), but its been a long time and I can't remember everything. The games are absolutely linked, though; XII just uses a far more graphically "refined" engine since they could tune up the graphics to account for the fact that they weren't using massive amounts of memory through making it a MMO.

Its why the game feels like it could honestly be either a MMO or a 4-player drop-in title. Man, that would have been a FUN 4-player drop-in...

[Elcura]

Watch his rifle animation. He has it slung on his shoulder while walking with it out, and he holds and fires it with one arm just like Male Elvaans.

Pretty much all of the main characters mimic the XI races in terms of battle motion, some more than others. It's been a while since I looked properly, but I was pretty sure I could see hume and mithra animations as well.

[Lucavi]

Was a damn good game. It'd be pretty cool to see the Garif in 2.0 in some way, shape or form. I doubt we'd see them as playable characters, as it'd look stupid seeing them showing up all wide-eyed as adventurers in one of the starter cities, but perhaps as a helpful NPC faction come some expansion down the road.

And its smart to have them do that; you've already got a game that's running the same engine; just save yourself time and port shit over, then pretty everything up.

[Waraji]

... I was pretty sure I could see hume and mithra animations as well.

Penelo was all Mithra animations, look at her stances with Great Swords, hell even sword and shield.

[Lucavi]

That would explain why she looked so hot... well, the animations and dat' ass.

[Skai]

Speaking of FF nostalgia, you know what would be awesome? Some time down the future they add a coliseum type instance where you fight actual Final Fantasy characters from previous installments.

[Gokulo]

Yeah, Tales of series does something like that and it's awesome D:

[Cichy]

Speaking of FF nostalgia, you know what would be awesome? Some time down the future they add a coliseum type instance where you fight actual Final Fantasy characters from previous installments.

I loved the colosseum in Kingdom Hearts

[Charismatic]

Yeah, Tales of series does something like that and it's awesome D:

It is.

Off-topic but have you seen footage of the Xillia 2 cameo fight? So hype... and the music too. If you've played Phantasia and Destiny you can't help but love it.

[drwaffles]

XII's gameplay was really good, and it felt a lot like XI's in many ways, so it seems to me that lots of people can be kept happy by taking a similar route with 2.0's combat. As long as 2.0 doesn't follow XII's footsteps in terms of storyline... Christ on a bike, XII's main story was fucking terrible.

I agree with whoever it was that said Alpha's combat feels (looks, in my case) too much like other games, even if the "FF feel" stuff is bullshit. This might be just as airy-fairy a description, but in most MMOs besides TERA combat doesn't feel 'solid' to me. Like, you're not actually hitting anything - you're just creating floating numbers rather than connecting blows. Combat in XI was way too slow for most of the game's life, but it actually felt like it had some weight behind it, as did XII's.

[Lucavi]

Not to toss your opinion in the mud (because its valid), but wait for beta. Not all of the stuff is in place in Alpha. There should be more "OOMPH!" come beta.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I know exactly what he's talking about and I agree. In many other games it's like combat is less ambient. You don't feel engaged even though you are engaged in a struggle. XI was over the top with this with everything essentially being an "elite" mob. 1.0 maintained that feel until jobs came into the mix, stat revamps were in, and combat was generally shorter. It's hard to put a finger on but it feels "loose" or like an after-though sometimes.

I like grinding as much as the next guy, if not more, but I don't wanna see it go that route. I'd like to see beta and onward male combat more beefy, significant, and "thick". Not necessarily tactful in solo play, but allow room for those elements in party settings.

[Neoscrilla]

The combat still LOOKS a tad slow, yet faster than 1.0. I know that compared with XI it is probably lightning fast, but I was wondering if anyone had any insight comparatively of how the battle speed is now to 1.0 and XI. And by Battle Speed I mean time between actions, not how fast things get killed. Thanks for any opinions/observations!!! Also going to a new server upon re-launch to start fresh. If anyone wants to ride the drama llama PM me, lol.

[Churchill]

Menu lag in 1.0 was still faster than XI combat - it was less responsive, slightly, but more dynamic entirely.

The counter to this is that WS had timers and you can press a button in XI and press another and WS and do that every 3s for a lot of the events, but you are essentially standing in one spot pressing 1-2 buttons until something dies. It's not fast paced or dynamic, if you use spellcast you can literally press CTRL+W and hit your WS and then repeat. Parsing on the top is a matter of having the best gear, best connection, and best ability to press "Enter". There is no skill involved or extraneous influences that can affect your performance should your response to them be poor. I guess you could get enfeebled, but that generally doesn't stop your TP gain or ability to press "Enter".

[Takiwaki]

Combat is much much faster, in terms of how quickly you can issue commands, compared to 1.0, the issue lies in how engaging the combat is, yes its faster and yes you can activate skills back to back but it lacks substance atm. Hopefully that greatly changes with the move to beta and higher levels. It is really weird reading the forums and seeing comments about how combat should not take effort and not be engaging, but just an after thought toward reaching your goal. That totally wtfed me.

[Lucavi]

That's OFers for ya.

[Spider-Dan]

The counter to this is that WS had timers and you can press a button in XI and press another and WS and do that every 3s for a lot of the events, but you are essentially standing in one spot pressing 1-2 buttons until something dies. It's not fast paced or dynamic, if you use spellcast you can literally press CTRL+W and hit your WS and then repeat. Parsing on the top is a matter of having the best gear, best connection, and best ability to press "Enter". There is no skill involved or extraneous influences that can affect your performance should your response to them be poor.

Maybe on one of the brain-dead DDs like MNK. THF was nowhere remotely near this description.

[Alkar]

Maybe on one of the brain-dead DDs like MNK. THF was nowhere remotely near this description.

Well that's because THF is all about TH and nothing more. Yay balance.

[Toth]

Playing the alpha for a good time now, the game feels like FF meets Xenosaga (funny enough I am almost at the end of my second Xenosaga playthrough.....75 hours in). That is a very good thing

[Ratatapa]

yay tonberries

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog