Models and Equipment

[ronin sparthos]

So while bigger things like the secret to AV, SMN fixes and job adjustments may take priority over many of the questions thrown at SE, heres a few questions that ive never seen thrown at SE regarding the aesthetics of of the game:

1. How exactly are models picked for new weapons and armor? What determines if an item gets a unique skin or not?

A running joke in FFXI is that the best gear tends to look the worst and while that may be not be completely true, alot of endgame gear tends to utilize some pretty "shunned" models. For example stuff like ace's helm, aurum/enkidu/oracles sets along with optical hat have been regarded as being useful but dreadfully "ugly". Is this done purely out of game limitations? Is there a method to the madness of picking what gear gets to look unique and what gets to be the new running joke among players?

2. ToAU introduced the system of defeating beastmen and restoring their equipment into usable and more importantly unique looking items. Generally this was a step in the right direction for a better looking game overall but why wasn't this expanded to more beastmen types and straight into WotG? The expansion is arguably very beastmen-themed anyway so it seems confusing to have abandoned the idea.

Many of the beastmen in the more recent expansions have unique weaponry and even at times armor that would be almost perfect to make usable by players in one way or another. Have these ever been considered for player use through the synth system established in back ToAU?

Example: Poroggo Hats, Lamiae "Heart" Staves (a few lamia use them in Besieged), Qutrub swords (the ones on their backs without the sheath), Troll "Guns" (its a gun but its also a cannon but its also a gun... you get the point) Tonberry Cloaks, WotG Gigas armor (the viking-esque gear), Soulflayer staves, Mamool Ja Mage Staves, WoTG Orc Masks, WoTG Yagudo Outfits, Qiqirn Cloaks.... the list goes on and on.

3. As the game continues to get more and more gear added with version updates are there any plans to actually go back and change of the appearance of gear that currently shares the same look as something else?

Heres an example: The Antares Harness added with the Sandworm BCNMs looks exactly like the Scorpion Harness thats been in the game forever.

While its understandable that a new harness model cannot be created for it due to hardware limitations and they are both derived from scorpions... does it have to *really* be the same color? Could this not have been solved with a simple pallet swap? Scorp Harness red, Antares Harness... black?

This question could be posed for tons of gear that share the exact same models, down to the color and everything.

The changes to some of the icons have been great (torques, moldy earring etc) but is it really much to color some gear different to give it a more unique look? (Dragon Mail -> Crimson Scale Mail is a perfect example of what i mean)

In the end, i know that SE has been doing some of what ive been talking about above but it never fails to see at times when a new piece of gear is released that it shares the same look as 3 other existing pieces down to the exact same color.

A few changes and liberal use of the color pallet would prove to make the game much more visually engaging for everyone.

[Lordwafik]

The problem lies with how the game is coded.

Instead of loading models on everyone, and the texture being applied to each texture separately, the texture is tied in with the .dat file. So if it were to be a palette swap, not only would the palette contain the new texture, but the whole file of the model itself.

For example we'll take Magus Jubbah. Marduk's Jubbah shares the model. If there's two people standing side by side, the game does this :
Person A = loading model A + Texture A
Person B = loading model B + Texture B

instead of
Person A = loading Model A + Texture A
Person B = loading Model A + Texture B

hence the ps2 limitations. There's only oh so many models on screen with the way it's been programmed, and unfortunately, new texture is basically a new model.

At least this is what I've dissected from model viewer /altanaviewer 3dmax.

[Corrderio]

I really don't think it'd be too hard for SE to at least give some gear different color textures. I'm not saying EVERYTHING needs a texture update. But all this endgame armor should look unique.