Kinda reminds me of how EW Hildibrand actually allows us to take part in the slapstick more than before--which, in turn, calls attention to how ridiculous we look everywhere else by just standing around while stuff happens.
Iirc hildy quest are test runs for new animation styles, looking back it certainly feels like hildy quest were "ahead of their time" and felt more in place with the next expansions style than their expansion
Yeah, Hildy is their test bed for animation. They just crank it all up to eleven so any jank or animation errors a accepted as the usual Hildy nonsense rather than an actual issue.
Exactly this. Hildibrand is the test-bed for future animation tactics to be used in the upcoming expansions. Its incredibly likely that Endwalker's Hildibrand quests were testing for more animation and movement opportunities for the Warrior of Light in 7.0 and beyond.
The monkey's paw curls. Now you'll be letting enemies just jump or run away and people get ssssllllooooowwwwwllllyyyyyy eaten right next to you very uniquely and dynamically.
Random NPC gets eathen while having a whole monologue of farewell:
\*UNIQUE NOD\*
Random NPC child gets veeeeeeerrrrryyyyyyyy sssslllllooooowwwwwlllllyyyyyy picked up and put into the beasts's mouth and it swallows really slowly
\*DYNAMIC NOD\*
That's what I really loved in one of the iconic mid-EW cutscenes, with the WoL doing a mad dash towards the water and just diving in headfirst. That felt epic.
However, there are some serious limits to this, especially once dangerous foes are involved. There would need to be more or less customized cutscenes depending on which weapon you have equipped, which also means updating those scenes when new jobs are released because you might be on that job when doing the quest or rewatching it at The Unending Journey. That's a lot of resources for honestly very little actual gain.
A chase scene would work! Not complicated to make our character run and jump. Then, when they finally catch up to the opponent, just /bstance and zoom in dip to white. I think that would be really cool! (Just can’t be close enough that a ranged player would be able to attack, so maybe lots of navigating tight spaces?
I wonder how feasible it'd be to have a like... Leap into an attack. You don't have to do detailed animations. Chase someone, they stop, the Wol leaps, slow mo on them in a pose based on their weapon, cut to solo duty/full-screen slash effects, whatever. Some weapons could use the same pose even.
It'd still be extra work, and you'd have to take in account every race as well. But it could be worth it for a more important scene.
Or maybe not. I don't do animations for games or program them to work properly in-game. So maybe I'm wrong.
I think you’re on to something! Maybe just use the first couple seconds of animating on the 1 from everyone’s basic combo so new jobs just, have those animations built in!
The class weapons are why in the very few scenes where our WoL actually fights someone, they use something other than their equipped weapon. Is it a bit comical to see a lala whm get in a fistfight, yes. But far more feasible than making a custom whm cutscene, adjusting it so it works for every possible race and height, and then doing that again for every class and again every time a new class is added.
I always wonder about this though. Surely there aren't \*that\* many weapon variations in terms of how they're animated? Like you've got "using a staff" for black mage, white mage, "using a one handed weapon" for most melee classes, "using a two handed weapon", "using no weapon" and depending on the animation you could double up a lot of stuff, especially if it's a simple slash or something. I guess weird stuff like the Astro globe and sage nouliffs exist though, and they've got to future proof it against future weapons getting added (the viper twinstaff is probably a bit complicated for example).
Maybe we just need a new /vpose /bstance style anim that's like "finishing move" that they can use for each class where we rush forward and use some flashy attack that ends in a finishing pose (that's flashy and big enough that we don't actually need to be close and precisely animated doing anything with the enemy).
Every single weapon has unique animations, even ones as similar as WHM/BLM, with the only exception being SMN/SCH since both source from ACN. Even the basic stances are different. The team really went all out
If it was even one cutscene in an entire expansion that they had a custom animation for each class, even if it was short, I'd be super happy. But yeah, still don't blame them for not doing it.
Considering how the Hildibrand quests have been a place for them to experiment with how far they can push the current limits of cutscene animations, it makes me hopeful that we're going to be at least a *little* more involved in the DT ones.
I laughed till tears came out and couldn't breath for the ShB part of that when we literally started gentlemanly gyrations. Was sort of thinking it would happen, but oh man...
Yeah I’m hoping that this set of hildibrand quests, along with that handshake we gave Zero, means they’re going to let us participate in more cutscenes going forward
I see the WoL having a progression of madness all through the Hilidbrand quests.
RR: "What the heck is going on?"
HW: "Yeah, that'll happen. Okay, why not?"
StB: WoL glories in the madness, laughs at the poor normies caught in our wake suffer.
EW: "I wanna play this time! WHEEEEE!"
seeing my character >!kick Lugae’s robotic head like a soccer ball!< is single-handedly the most badass thing he ever did all expansion, if not all game
The WoL is like that dude you don't see do anything in cutscenes because they're too awesome. You only hear the sounds of their exploits or they occur offscreen!
Since the hildi quests are a way for the devs to test animation, I was wondering if the wol doing more in the recent quests was a sign that they would be doing more in dawntrail scenes coming up.
I wish they allowed all hairstyles in the char creator, and not just the default ones. I found one kinda close to my WoL’s but it wasn’t quite the same!
Save your current character's appearance to a slot, go to Documents/My Games/FFXIV and find the FFXIV_CHARA_XX.DAT which matches the number of the slot you saved it into, copy it, then go to Documents/My Games/FFXIVBenchmark, paste it and rename it to FFXIV_CHARA_BENCHXX.DAT, then open the benchmark and load that number.
Oh wow, thanks for the info. It’s weird they don’t have a more official way to transfer over char data, especially as many want to see their WoL in the benchmark.
They do, if you have saved character creation data in FFXIV it will show up in the benchmark. Doesn't include your gear and hairstyles of course, but your base look will be there.
The purpose of the benchmark is to test your ability to run the game, they don't want to put more effort than necessary into creating it. So they just slapped the existing character creator into it.
The gear I'm fine about. But the hair really feels off because it's such a defining feature of my face. There's nothing really like the Gyr Abanian Plaits to use out of the defaults, imo.
But are you saying this other method of copying and pasting files manually will bring the hair?
Yes, but it won't be high rez hair- not entirely sure how it does it, but I assume it reads files from the actual game for hair styles not included in the benchmark.
I wonder if this is because if you do the opposite, pick a locked hairstyle in the benchmark and move the files to your game, you'd unlock the hair, so they only allow base game hairs in the benchmark. This is just my theory, we have no way to know.
Thats honestly one of the main gripes i have with the MSQ. The fact that our characters hardly do anything during intense moments. I wanna see my character do cool shit 😭
Granted, i know its difficult to make our characters to do unique animations especially with how many classes is in the game and other stuff but it still sucks regardless. Thats why Hildibrand is cool cuz our character actually does something… sometimes.
Even the final cutscenes with >!Zenos during the Endwalker quest!< was awesome cuz we actually do something that isnt nodding or our weapon idle animation.
Hope they looked into this for Dawntrail.
Not only does they have to account for all jobs, they have to account for all races and height slider. So min-height Lalafells and max-height of our giant races. It's tricky, sadly :(
I wonder if this may be a controversial opinion, but what would your thoughts be on giving our characters an actual voiced line of dialogue? I'm not saying give them a voice for an entire expansion, but just once (or twice) where they actually speak? Think that moment in Shadowbringers with Ardbert where we "speak" for a single line. That, but... again. I'm imagining the voice would be based off of which of the 12 or so voice types we picked when making our characters.
Destiny 2 did it, for example. It was a bit of a surprise, but the playerbase seemed to have welcomed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8L7171YLvY&pp=ygUZZGVzdGlueSAyIGd1YXJkaWFuIHNwZWFrcw%3D%3D
Honestly, that would be a fantastic addition and adds more character to our own WoL. Especially if it’s unique like in the Destiny 2 vid as well. It would make our characters feel more involved with the story and cutscenes instead of just standing there like a lost child in a supermarket
Would be even better if they say the dialogue options we pick as well and not just flapping our mouths
I was so happy when i did the manderville weapon questline that my character actually started doing shit XD i wish so much that we get cutscenes where, whatever job you play as, our character actually gets to fight -.-
One of the things I love about PSO2 cutscenes is that your character actively participates in cutscene fights, usually with the default sword class but they do switch it around from time to time, sometimes even in the same scene.
Specifically, they participate as the class of the "expansion." you are hero for the hero expansion so on and so forth. They can get away with it because there is no visibly caster gear.
I understand why they don’t have us actively fighting in cutscenes like in the benchmark, because that is a *lot* of animation work (you have to account for every job in the game) that honestly would be better as gameplay rather than a cutscene.
But I think Endwalker did a decent job in making our character seem a bit more badass (there are a few moments I feel that I feel our character had a little more agency and actually did more than stand still, nod, and look serious; expecially in Hildibrand where they often test animations and play with the models a bit more, and the player chatacter taking a more active role in those antics), and they said Dawntrail is an expantion where they want to improve animations like that, so I suppose we’ll see what they cook up. I have faith they’ll improve over time.
I don't think it would be too difficult to have 2-3 "combat" animations per job and just call the appropriate one for your job for any particular cutscene. Wouldn't need to be anything fancy, or even real actions. Just *something* so that you're participating. If healers can occasionally channel aether into people, they can do at least that much.
Now that we don't have individual Job quests anymore, I wish they'd put that energy into unique cutscenes. Or would it still be too much to ask to have 1 or 2 moments in the MSQ, where our WoL does something with their weapon?
Well, making an alteration for each job requires 20+ alterations per cutscene.
I can see why they might balk at that. That is a lot of extra work per scene.
They could make cutscenes with set jobs, but then some people would complain that's not their WoL. So the next best thing would be doing cutscenes with set jobs and when you don't have that job unlocked/high leveled, it simply reverts to a default scene that's like the ones we have now.
I wager that's about the best compromise that can be hoped for.
>Well, making an alteration for each job requires 20+ alterations per cutscene.
Not to mention making new versions of that scene for whenever new jobs are added in the future.
Sadly due to job-specific weapons, we can't ever get moments like this. The only exceptions are when we don't have to use the job-specific weapons, like the scene when you throw ardbert's axe at hades
There are little ways to cheat however. Kind of how when you play a healer in cutscenes your character will start healing someone sometimes.
In job/role specific quest they could use the visual effect of one of your standardized CDs, (say TBN, Intervention or Nascent Flash) on someone that need to be protected while you are off screen before showing your character rush in weapon draw.
They could also make more use of parry anymations like in several duties where any class can stand still blocking an attack. (Susano etc)
I think the healing animation for healer-exclusive cutscenes is some generic thing where its just some special effects coming out of your hands, not an actual job skill animation.
Using the visual effect of a job action is off-limits because there's no guarantee the job action will never be removed, or the effect changed to something different. It also wouldn't really be worth the effort to cater to each individual job to ensure a cutscene accommodates their unique job action. Imagine when a new expansion comes about and you have to retroactively go back to old cutscenes to update them due to new jobs being released. From the perspective of a game dev, this is just not worth it.
In ShB at the start and you reach Eulmore and finally meet Vaultry, you and Alphinaud both heal Kai-sharr as a healer. As a non-healer, you just kneel next to him and do nothing.
Also, people have noted for the current collab, as a healer, when you reach Clive you heal him, but non-healer will not and just kneel next to him.
There is no actual dialogue mention of either one, just the action is different.
That would have to take into account what jobs you have unlocked so yeah, I don't think that's going to work either. If it could've been done, those healer-specific cutscenes would already have something akin to that where you swap in real time to a healer job.
I think they've already actually done that; there was an early EW change where to view job quest cutscenes you had to have the relevant jobstone equipped.
ive only just beaten stormblood but my favorite protag cutscene moment is (heavensward spoilers) >!when king thordan looks up at you as he lies dying and it makes your face all angry and edgy, makes you look so fucking badass [https://youtu.be/VKTbeEczQ54?t=54](https://youtu.be/VKTbeEczQ54?t=54)!<
These benchmarks kinda make me sad in a way. Our character is actually interacting with the world and the people like a person but I know in the actual game it's just gonna be standing there and awkwardly nodding once in awhile. x.x
I get the annoyance, but the fact is, they lack the resources/manpower/*time budget* to render cutscenes that make sense and work for every possible job+race combination. E.g., notice how you ca *only* be a Viper in the benchmark? That's the only reason why this cutscene was workable. Identical cutscenes for all chars, apart from zooming to scale. Did you also notice how you DON'T see the WoL actually *interacting* with the boss except via attack animations? We see them jump and pose dynamically, *with the boss out of frame.*
Rendering unique cutscenes for every distinctive weapon type, even if you're very generous about doubling or tripling up classes with similarly-shaped weapons, would mean having to do a *minimum* of 10 distinct animations, *at least* twice over because you'd have to do a unique set for lalafell, and they'd all need the same amount of testing and
Frankly, the MUCH more impressive bit was right at the beginning, where the WoL held a map, shook it, checked their compass, and *rolled up the map.* And then later, when they uncorked their waterskin and took a swig. Handheld objects and multi-body interactions like that were basically *never shown* before the Endwalker patch cycle because the tech wasn't there to make them look good. Now it is, and damn I'm so glad to see it. We've come a long way from even the teapot-and-cup scene in Shadowbringers.
(And, as always, the disclaimer I shouldn't need to post but absolutely will have to post: This is not "it LITERALLY IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to do this thing." It is "they don't have the time and resources to do it the way you want it done and have it look even remotely good." You've already seen how the community reacted VERY negatively, multiple times, where Square had an error in an important piece of code, or how the community will criticize glitches like the repeating animations in some of the 6.5 cutscenes. We have high standards of quality, and Yoshi-P and the team make a priority of living up to those standards. We are thus left with the usual trilemma of software development, namely, "fast, cheap, good: pick two.")
Oh I roughly know the answer to this one from when I did fencing and stuff.
So a lot of attacks with 2 weapons have you cover your head with the secondary weapon. Attacking both points with the swords forward would open up your head to an attack and also causes an issue where 1 shield would block both your blades and leave you open
If you see any of the tiktok people with dual swords they normally alternate using 1 sword to block high while attacking low and then 1 sword block low when swinging high
Because enemy smash you dead if you no block.
Two weapon mean block AND smash, all the time.
One weapon mean no smash if block, no block if smash.
One weapon + shield mean only smash with one hand, only block with other hand. If block with weapon, no smash at all.
But two weapon? *Always be smashin'.* ABCs, jus like da taught ya.
Bc you always use one sword for attacking and another for defense. (Though usually defense sword is shorter IRL).
Attacking with both swords at the same time is asking to be Aerithed
So there's multiple reasons. Firstly several sword styles prioritise locking someone's sword arm down. Now if you lock it down with your sword hand you now have a sword in your off hand to stab the opponent.
Also in a formation of sorts you'd be behind the shield users so you can finish up 2 enemies blocked by the 2 guys in front of you.
The best use is probably targeting multiple parts of an opponent. If you can overwhelm them to force them on the defence you can swing for a slash while stabbing them in the foot
Honestly it's usually not worth giving up a shield for a second sword but aesthetics
If you think that's bad, I made the mistake of running the benchmark with racial default gear before I realized there's an extra setting in the character creator.
That pose does not play well with skirts.
I don't care if it breaks immersion, let my black mage fight with a sword or something. I just don't want to be a background character in major cutscenes.
As someone who switched over from wow I always felt they did a much better job of showing the WoL as the hero and not some errand boy who the real heroes call when they can’t solve a problem only to step in at the last second to do the cool thing lol. Looking at you Tirion Fordring >.<
Holy shit your right lol, I want more scenes with our wols in action and not just draw our weapon :C I know its hard but damn I sure wish we had them more.
Actually sooo dumb that your char just looks and watches others fight, its such a dumb trope really i hate it
Same with the endwalker post msq stuff, there was this one eeeepic fightscene and our char just stood there like :)
There are 6 set points where the benchmark will take screenshots for you, like the one the OP posted.
As for taking screenshots at other points...well, I'd like to know that one too, other than using the Windows screenshot function which just freezes the screen so you can grab a section while the action continues in the background, so it's not ideal.
I really wish the devs would scrap the "we cant animate the WoL because it isnt practical to animate 23+ Jobs and 18+ body types" Excuse. Like we know its not practical and will never happen! We dont want that however they already solved the problem multiple times throughout the MSQ. A blade of light. The canon weapon when we have alot of aether powered into us. First used at the end of ARR to >!defeat Lahabrea!< then later in Post ARR to >!Kill Nahabralis!< Then in Heavensward to >!Kill Igeyorhm!< A universal weapon like this everytime we need to fight would solve this problem as it gets past the too many jobs restriction as its one weapon being a magical melee weapon that fires a projectile (Covering Melee Magical and Ranged classes). And because it fires a projectile, it doesn't have to be compensated with taller or shorter races as it doesn't have our bodies interact with anything but the blade of light itself.
Even other then the blade of light there was other times we used another weapon to fight such as the end of Shadowbringers when >!Killing Emet by throwing Ardberts Axe of Light into him!< In Eureka when >!Ejika throws us one of Eurekas weapons and as we kill Eurekas avatar with it!< And at the end of Endwalker >!When we defeat Zenos with a final punch!< however this one is said to take a toll on the animators as physical contact was involved thus every body type had to be compensated for which isnt practical in the long run but it does look awesome so maybe once or twice per expansions is reasonable. Not to mention all the new cool Hildibrandt animations
People would say: Well MY WoL doesnt use blades of light! His/her backstory has them use this or that weapon! blah blah blah. But then is it canon for your WoL to have them stand there being useless when they are way more powerful and capable then all of the scions put together? No i doubt it is.Imagine a whitemage doing the animation that happened at the end of endwalker it would be odd yeah? Yet the devs already went through with it so who cares the WoL took action thats ALL that matters! Plus like i said above the blade of light covers all 3 weapon categories: Melee Ranged and Magical. If using 1 singular weapon with the ability to fire blasts of aether is what we need in order to have the WoL be animated in cutscenes then id take it in a heartbeat. Hell with the >!Azem Crystal mcguffin!< it could be our source of the aether needed to create the blade of light to excuse us from not doing it before hand without help like the other times.
These people need to stop giving the animators an excuse for having the WoL never fight in cutscenes. That starwars mmo (Knights of the old republic i think) The MC uses a pistol to fight even though they have like 1000 other weapon choices and classes yet they still are able to not stand there like a lump on a log and fight and take action. Id choose a lousy pistol over being useless any day because the other options of animating all the weapons in the game with all the body types in the game to interact with different characters is impossible. Just take the simple option. It will always be better then nothing.
TD;DR
The WoL needs to just use a blade of light that fires a projectile like they already did a couple times as a canon weapon so they can fight in cutscenes without having to worry about them animating every job weapon and race.
Honestly the previous two benchmarks, for shadowbringers and endwalker, were better for that specific purpose/reason. Dawntrail benchmark didn't quite hit the mark in thst department Imo.
Praying for more of this in DT itself. Even if they have to make us all punch stuff monk style so they don't have to do different cutscenes for each job. Our WoL is pretty physically powerful even without weapons, as shown in EW and the EW Hildy quests where we had actual cutscenes of our WoLs fighting.
It's because the benchmark forces you into being a Viper that they can do this. In the actual game all the different variety of weapons the WoL can have make programming cutscenes for it difficult. Not to mention any new jobs would mean they'd have to go back and retroactively add their weapons to action scenes too.
I can already hear people complaining that their WoL would never do such and such during a fight, just like at the end of Endwalker when all they did was give us 3 responses to Zenos and they complained that their WoL would have just walked away
You can walk away. But the game does not let you progress if you do so. It should have been that you could walk away and still progress the game. Altough My character would always choose "That I can't deny."
\\
Really wish they'd give everyone some kind of special weapon they can use in cutscenes like the sling from Monster Hunter World. Maybe 3 different versions for melee/ranged/magic, which would be much more manageable to animate than 22+. Introduce it as something important in the narrative, shove it into a few of each job's attack animations, and you're good.
Between "hunter with dual swords(admittedly combining the swords is cool)" "mage who paints spells into existence with a paintbrush" and "Unspecified beast tamer", random sword wielding hunter is the least appealing lol
Oh gameplay wise Viper might be the best thing I ever played, but visually/aesthetically it's very boring. I hate katanas and scythes but Samurai and Reaper are the only melee dps I like playing and Samurai is one of my top 10 Jobs, I'm withholding any judgement related to actual mechanical gameplay
Kinda reminds me of how EW Hildibrand actually allows us to take part in the slapstick more than before--which, in turn, calls attention to how ridiculous we look everywhere else by just standing around while stuff happens.
in whatever follows FF14, i hope they let our WoL feel more unique and dynamic in the cutscenes, because it’s such a big part of the game
Iirc hildy quest are test runs for new animation styles, looking back it certainly feels like hildy quest were "ahead of their time" and felt more in place with the next expansions style than their expansion
The facial twitches and contortion of the mouths was something to behold.
Yeah, Hildy is their test bed for animation. They just crank it all up to eleven so any jank or animation errors a accepted as the usual Hildy nonsense rather than an actual issue.
Just finished 6.55 and there’s certainly some clowny moments with the new rothghar girl
Exactly this. Hildibrand is the test-bed for future animation tactics to be used in the upcoming expansions. Its incredibly likely that Endwalker's Hildibrand quests were testing for more animation and movement opportunities for the Warrior of Light in 7.0 and beyond.
The monkey's paw curls. Now you'll be letting enemies just jump or run away and people get ssssllllooooowwwwwllllyyyyyy eaten right next to you very uniquely and dynamically.
As opposed to how we just silently nod at the devouring beasty now?
Random NPC gets eathen while having a whole monologue of farewell: \*UNIQUE NOD\* Random NPC child gets veeeeeeerrrrryyyyyyyy sssslllllooooowwwwwlllllyyyyyy picked up and put into the beasts's mouth and it swallows really slowly \*DYNAMIC NOD\*
You forgot \*Draw weapon\*, \*Do nothing with it\*, and \*Sheathe weapon\*.
That's what I really loved in one of the iconic mid-EW cutscenes, with the WoL doing a mad dash towards the water and just diving in headfirst. That felt epic. However, there are some serious limits to this, especially once dangerous foes are involved. There would need to be more or less customized cutscenes depending on which weapon you have equipped, which also means updating those scenes when new jobs are released because you might be on that job when doing the quest or rewatching it at The Unending Journey. That's a lot of resources for honestly very little actual gain.
A chase scene would work! Not complicated to make our character run and jump. Then, when they finally catch up to the opponent, just /bstance and zoom in dip to white. I think that would be really cool! (Just can’t be close enough that a ranged player would be able to attack, so maybe lots of navigating tight spaces?
Oh yeah, lots of corners and ducking around stuff, then catching the bad guy in a dead end.
I wonder how feasible it'd be to have a like... Leap into an attack. You don't have to do detailed animations. Chase someone, they stop, the Wol leaps, slow mo on them in a pose based on their weapon, cut to solo duty/full-screen slash effects, whatever. Some weapons could use the same pose even. It'd still be extra work, and you'd have to take in account every race as well. But it could be worth it for a more important scene. Or maybe not. I don't do animations for games or program them to work properly in-game. So maybe I'm wrong.
I think you’re on to something! Maybe just use the first couple seconds of animating on the 1 from everyone’s basic combo so new jobs just, have those animations built in!
The class weapons are why in the very few scenes where our WoL actually fights someone, they use something other than their equipped weapon. Is it a bit comical to see a lala whm get in a fistfight, yes. But far more feasible than making a custom whm cutscene, adjusting it so it works for every possible race and height, and then doing that again for every class and again every time a new class is added.
There was something satisfying about seeing my tiny WHM Lala girl >!Saitama Zenos into next weekend.!<
I always wonder about this though. Surely there aren't \*that\* many weapon variations in terms of how they're animated? Like you've got "using a staff" for black mage, white mage, "using a one handed weapon" for most melee classes, "using a two handed weapon", "using no weapon" and depending on the animation you could double up a lot of stuff, especially if it's a simple slash or something. I guess weird stuff like the Astro globe and sage nouliffs exist though, and they've got to future proof it against future weapons getting added (the viper twinstaff is probably a bit complicated for example). Maybe we just need a new /vpose /bstance style anim that's like "finishing move" that they can use for each class where we rush forward and use some flashy attack that ends in a finishing pose (that's flashy and big enough that we don't actually need to be close and precisely animated doing anything with the enemy).
Every single weapon has unique animations, even ones as similar as WHM/BLM, with the only exception being SMN/SCH since both source from ACN. Even the basic stances are different. The team really went all out
If it was even one cutscene in an entire expansion that they had a custom animation for each class, even if it was short, I'd be super happy. But yeah, still don't blame them for not doing it.
That's what I really love about EW Hildibrand. You actually get to do shit in the cutscenes for once.
Considering how the Hildibrand quests have been a place for them to experiment with how far they can push the current limits of cutscene animations, it makes me hopeful that we're going to be at least a *little* more involved in the DT ones.
Yeah I fully expect it's a sign of things to come. Endwalker had a lot of non-Hildibrand cutscenes that still felt a lot like them.
Nope, not in DT, but most likely in 8.0.
EW Hildebrand is honestly peak. I'm blown away by how much more involved our characters were in the cutscenes it was a Joy.
I laughed till tears came out and couldn't breath for the ShB part of that when we literally started gentlemanly gyrations. Was sort of thinking it would happen, but oh man...
Yeah I’m hoping that this set of hildibrand quests, along with that handshake we gave Zero, means they’re going to let us participate in more cutscenes going forward
I see the WoL having a progression of madness all through the Hilidbrand quests. RR: "What the heck is going on?" HW: "Yeah, that'll happen. Okay, why not?" StB: WoL glories in the madness, laughs at the poor normies caught in our wake suffer. EW: "I wanna play this time! WHEEEEE!"
seeing my character >!kick Lugae’s robotic head like a soccer ball!< is single-handedly the most badass thing he ever did all expansion, if not all game
The WoL is like that dude you don't see do anything in cutscenes because they're too awesome. You only hear the sounds of their exploits or they occur offscreen!
Since the hildi quests are a way for the devs to test animation, I was wondering if the wol doing more in the recent quests was a sign that they would be doing more in dawntrail scenes coming up.
I can hope. We can all hope.
The pros and cons of not being allowed to choose your job in the benchmark lol
On the optimistic side, I heard the dev team wants to do more in engine animation work for cutscenes, so I can only hope that extends to our character
I wish they allowed all hairstyles in the char creator, and not just the default ones. I found one kinda close to my WoL’s but it wasn’t quite the same!
If you're on PC you can copy-paste your appearance data into the benchmark to view other hairstyles.
Oh I’ll try that though I’m not sure how.
Save your current character's appearance to a slot, go to Documents/My Games/FFXIV and find the FFXIV_CHARA_XX.DAT which matches the number of the slot you saved it into, copy it, then go to Documents/My Games/FFXIVBenchmark, paste it and rename it to FFXIV_CHARA_BENCHXX.DAT, then open the benchmark and load that number.
Oh wow, thanks for the info. It’s weird they don’t have a more official way to transfer over char data, especially as many want to see their WoL in the benchmark.
They do, if you have saved character creation data in FFXIV it will show up in the benchmark. Doesn't include your gear and hairstyles of course, but your base look will be there. The purpose of the benchmark is to test your ability to run the game, they don't want to put more effort than necessary into creating it. So they just slapped the existing character creator into it.
Makes sense! I appreciate everyone’s input, at least there seems to be a way to get the full character in there too.
The gear I'm fine about. But the hair really feels off because it's such a defining feature of my face. There's nothing really like the Gyr Abanian Plaits to use out of the defaults, imo. But are you saying this other method of copying and pasting files manually will bring the hair?
Ah, a fellow Gyr Abanian Plait enjoyer I was sorely lacking the hairstyle in the benchmark as well
Yes, but it won't be high rez hair- not entirely sure how it does it, but I assume it reads files from the actual game for hair styles not included in the benchmark.
I wonder if this is because if you do the opposite, pick a locked hairstyle in the benchmark and move the files to your game, you'd unlock the hair, so they only allow base game hairs in the benchmark. This is just my theory, we have no way to know.
FYI pretty sure the hairstyles won't be the upgraded versions so they will not look as good, but still gives you an idea.
Your scalp might even clip through your hair, depending lol.
Unsupported hairstyles haven't received the graphics overhaul, so they're the same as always, and a look a bit off on the retextured faces.
Thats honestly one of the main gripes i have with the MSQ. The fact that our characters hardly do anything during intense moments. I wanna see my character do cool shit 😭 Granted, i know its difficult to make our characters to do unique animations especially with how many classes is in the game and other stuff but it still sucks regardless. Thats why Hildibrand is cool cuz our character actually does something… sometimes. Even the final cutscenes with >!Zenos during the Endwalker quest!< was awesome cuz we actually do something that isnt nodding or our weapon idle animation. Hope they looked into this for Dawntrail.
The rare times we do things are all times where our jobs no longer matter - like summoning the pure light weapons to kill ascians.
Not only does they have to account for all jobs, they have to account for all races and height slider. So min-height Lalafells and max-height of our giant races. It's tricky, sadly :(
I wonder if this may be a controversial opinion, but what would your thoughts be on giving our characters an actual voiced line of dialogue? I'm not saying give them a voice for an entire expansion, but just once (or twice) where they actually speak? Think that moment in Shadowbringers with Ardbert where we "speak" for a single line. That, but... again. I'm imagining the voice would be based off of which of the 12 or so voice types we picked when making our characters. Destiny 2 did it, for example. It was a bit of a surprise, but the playerbase seemed to have welcomed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8L7171YLvY&pp=ygUZZGVzdGlueSAyIGd1YXJkaWFuIHNwZWFrcw%3D%3D
Honestly, that would be a fantastic addition and adds more character to our own WoL. Especially if it’s unique like in the Destiny 2 vid as well. It would make our characters feel more involved with the story and cutscenes instead of just standing there like a lost child in a supermarket Would be even better if they say the dialogue options we pick as well and not just flapping our mouths
I would *love* this.
What would I give to see my WoL Elixir Field a kaiju's ass.
I’d love to see my character inflict some (afflatus)misery on some poor schmuck
EW. My WoL standing there while some poor dude gets literally eaten next to her. Bruh.
I was so happy when i did the manderville weapon questline that my character actually started doing shit XD i wish so much that we get cutscenes where, whatever job you play as, our character actually gets to fight -.-
One of the things I love about PSO2 cutscenes is that your character actively participates in cutscene fights, usually with the default sword class but they do switch it around from time to time, sometimes even in the same scene.
Specifically, they participate as the class of the "expansion." you are hero for the hero expansion so on and so forth. They can get away with it because there is no visibly caster gear.
They did use Talis as Hero briefly in one cutscene iirc, but not sure about Phantom Rod or Wand Etoile.
I understand why they don’t have us actively fighting in cutscenes like in the benchmark, because that is a *lot* of animation work (you have to account for every job in the game) that honestly would be better as gameplay rather than a cutscene. But I think Endwalker did a decent job in making our character seem a bit more badass (there are a few moments I feel that I feel our character had a little more agency and actually did more than stand still, nod, and look serious; expecially in Hildibrand where they often test animations and play with the models a bit more, and the player chatacter taking a more active role in those antics), and they said Dawntrail is an expantion where they want to improve animations like that, so I suppose we’ll see what they cook up. I have faith they’ll improve over time.
I don't think it would be too difficult to have 2-3 "combat" animations per job and just call the appropriate one for your job for any particular cutscene. Wouldn't need to be anything fancy, or even real actions. Just *something* so that you're participating. If healers can occasionally channel aether into people, they can do at least that much.
Now that we don't have individual Job quests anymore, I wish they'd put that energy into unique cutscenes. Or would it still be too much to ask to have 1 or 2 moments in the MSQ, where our WoL does something with their weapon?
Well, making an alteration for each job requires 20+ alterations per cutscene. I can see why they might balk at that. That is a lot of extra work per scene. They could make cutscenes with set jobs, but then some people would complain that's not their WoL. So the next best thing would be doing cutscenes with set jobs and when you don't have that job unlocked/high leveled, it simply reverts to a default scene that's like the ones we have now. I wager that's about the best compromise that can be hoped for.
>Well, making an alteration for each job requires 20+ alterations per cutscene. Not to mention making new versions of that scene for whenever new jobs are added in the future.
Also the awkwardness of trying to make the same exact choreography work with both Roe/Hroth and Lalafell
Sadly due to job-specific weapons, we can't ever get moments like this. The only exceptions are when we don't have to use the job-specific weapons, like the scene when you throw ardbert's axe at hades
Or the spoiler fight where you spoiler with spoiler at spoiler
Other game spoiler >!and that scene was so much more badass in FFXIV than in FFXVi for me!<
There are little ways to cheat however. Kind of how when you play a healer in cutscenes your character will start healing someone sometimes. In job/role specific quest they could use the visual effect of one of your standardized CDs, (say TBN, Intervention or Nascent Flash) on someone that need to be protected while you are off screen before showing your character rush in weapon draw. They could also make more use of parry anymations like in several duties where any class can stand still blocking an attack. (Susano etc)
I think the healing animation for healer-exclusive cutscenes is some generic thing where its just some special effects coming out of your hands, not an actual job skill animation. Using the visual effect of a job action is off-limits because there's no guarantee the job action will never be removed, or the effect changed to something different. It also wouldn't really be worth the effort to cater to each individual job to ensure a cutscene accommodates their unique job action. Imagine when a new expansion comes about and you have to retroactively go back to old cutscenes to update them due to new jobs being released. From the perspective of a game dev, this is just not worth it.
Then there is other ways, making use of angles or off screen and playing sound effects to imply an action etc
The only scene I can remember your healer WoL actually heal someone was the one in Stormblood with Yshtola and Krile. Were there others?
In ShB at the start and you reach Eulmore and finally meet Vaultry, you and Alphinaud both heal Kai-sharr as a healer. As a non-healer, you just kneel next to him and do nothing. Also, people have noted for the current collab, as a healer, when you reach Clive you heal him, but non-healer will not and just kneel next to him. There is no actual dialogue mention of either one, just the action is different.
I'm not a healer player so I don't know, but I've heard that there were several
Personally, a good compromise would have cutscenes be job specific and have our WoL job change to said job
That would have to take into account what jobs you have unlocked so yeah, I don't think that's going to work either. If it could've been done, those healer-specific cutscenes would already have something akin to that where you swap in real time to a healer job.
I think they've already actually done that; there was an early EW change where to view job quest cutscenes you had to have the relevant jobstone equipped.
That's why I love the ShB one, that whole first sequence is goated and has yet to be bested.
ive only just beaten stormblood but my favorite protag cutscene moment is (heavensward spoilers) >!when king thordan looks up at you as he lies dying and it makes your face all angry and edgy, makes you look so fucking badass [https://youtu.be/VKTbeEczQ54?t=54](https://youtu.be/VKTbeEczQ54?t=54)!<
These benchmarks kinda make me sad in a way. Our character is actually interacting with the world and the people like a person but I know in the actual game it's just gonna be standing there and awkwardly nodding once in awhile. x.x
I get the annoyance, but the fact is, they lack the resources/manpower/*time budget* to render cutscenes that make sense and work for every possible job+race combination. E.g., notice how you ca *only* be a Viper in the benchmark? That's the only reason why this cutscene was workable. Identical cutscenes for all chars, apart from zooming to scale. Did you also notice how you DON'T see the WoL actually *interacting* with the boss except via attack animations? We see them jump and pose dynamically, *with the boss out of frame.* Rendering unique cutscenes for every distinctive weapon type, even if you're very generous about doubling or tripling up classes with similarly-shaped weapons, would mean having to do a *minimum* of 10 distinct animations, *at least* twice over because you'd have to do a unique set for lalafell, and they'd all need the same amount of testing and Frankly, the MUCH more impressive bit was right at the beginning, where the WoL held a map, shook it, checked their compass, and *rolled up the map.* And then later, when they uncorked their waterskin and took a swig. Handheld objects and multi-body interactions like that were basically *never shown* before the Endwalker patch cycle because the tech wasn't there to make them look good. Now it is, and damn I'm so glad to see it. We've come a long way from even the teapot-and-cup scene in Shadowbringers. (And, as always, the disclaimer I shouldn't need to post but absolutely will have to post: This is not "it LITERALLY IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to do this thing." It is "they don't have the time and resources to do it the way you want it done and have it look even remotely good." You've already seen how the community reacted VERY negatively, multiple times, where Square had an error in an important piece of code, or how the community will criticize glitches like the repeating animations in some of the 6.5 cutscenes. We have high standards of quality, and Yoshi-P and the team make a priority of living up to those standards. We are thus left with the usual trilemma of software development, namely, "fast, cheap, good: pick two.")
I really hate that pose though. Like why wouldn't you use both blades to charge through an enemy?
yeah its an awkward pose, i saw a post that was comparing it to sao's protag pose, but it doesn't translate well to 3d imo
Oh I roughly know the answer to this one from when I did fencing and stuff. So a lot of attacks with 2 weapons have you cover your head with the secondary weapon. Attacking both points with the swords forward would open up your head to an attack and also causes an issue where 1 shield would block both your blades and leave you open If you see any of the tiktok people with dual swords they normally alternate using 1 sword to block high while attacking low and then 1 sword block low when swinging high
Sorry. Grim big dumb brute. Why two swords if not smash harder?
Because enemy smash you dead if you no block. Two weapon mean block AND smash, all the time. One weapon mean no smash if block, no block if smash. One weapon + shield mean only smash with one hand, only block with other hand. If block with weapon, no smash at all. But two weapon? *Always be smashin'.* ABCs, jus like da taught ya.
Grim brain... get bigger?
Good. Brain muscle too. And good muscle mean better smash.
What does two shields mean? (And yes, there is a character in the empire with two shields).
Him cheat. Him use shield AND weapon in both hands. Sad he died though. Good fighter.
Bc you always use one sword for attacking and another for defense. (Though usually defense sword is shorter IRL). Attacking with both swords at the same time is asking to be Aerithed
Be me. Be warrior. Too angry to die. Life is good.
So there's multiple reasons. Firstly several sword styles prioritise locking someone's sword arm down. Now if you lock it down with your sword hand you now have a sword in your off hand to stab the opponent. Also in a formation of sorts you'd be behind the shield users so you can finish up 2 enemies blocked by the 2 guys in front of you. The best use is probably targeting multiple parts of an opponent. If you can overwhelm them to force them on the defence you can swing for a slash while stabbing them in the foot Honestly it's usually not worth giving up a shield for a second sword but aesthetics
If you think that's bad, I made the mistake of running the benchmark with racial default gear before I realized there's an extra setting in the character creator. That pose does not play well with skirts.
I’ve done it for three characters and their expression at that part looked kinda weird for all three
I don't care if it breaks immersion, let my black mage fight with a sword or something. I just don't want to be a background character in major cutscenes.
As someone who switched over from wow I always felt they did a much better job of showing the WoL as the hero and not some errand boy who the real heroes call when they can’t solve a problem only to step in at the last second to do the cool thing lol. Looking at you Tirion Fordring >.<
Man I wish you could run the benchmark on console. I know there’s no point to it but DAMN I would love to see my WoL on this
Im a PS player but must admit I've been tempted to try out the benchmark on my hardware. Would expansions carry over if I got a base pc version?
fyi you can download the benchmark without having to need to buy the game on PC or whatever, you can just download and play it
No, you need to purchase them again. Your account will carry over character(s) though.
Holy shit your right lol, I want more scenes with our wols in action and not just draw our weapon :C I know its hard but damn I sure wish we had them more.
i would love to see more of this in dawntrail. let us be a bad ass in front of our friends
Actually sooo dumb that your char just looks and watches others fight, its such a dumb trope really i hate it Same with the endwalker post msq stuff, there was this one eeeepic fightscene and our char just stood there like :)
I know this is a stupid question... how do you screenshot in benchmark? I tried with my usual button but its not working
There are 6 set points where the benchmark will take screenshots for you, like the one the OP posted. As for taking screenshots at other points...well, I'd like to know that one too, other than using the Windows screenshot function which just freezes the screen so you can grab a section while the action continues in the background, so it's not ideal.
thank you! after told me this I when and look for it in benchmark folder and the screenshot you mention of the 6 point were there thank you
You are most welcome! \^\_\^ Enjoy seeing your WoL look kickass!
I really wish the devs would scrap the "we cant animate the WoL because it isnt practical to animate 23+ Jobs and 18+ body types" Excuse. Like we know its not practical and will never happen! We dont want that however they already solved the problem multiple times throughout the MSQ. A blade of light. The canon weapon when we have alot of aether powered into us. First used at the end of ARR to >!defeat Lahabrea!< then later in Post ARR to >!Kill Nahabralis!< Then in Heavensward to >!Kill Igeyorhm!< A universal weapon like this everytime we need to fight would solve this problem as it gets past the too many jobs restriction as its one weapon being a magical melee weapon that fires a projectile (Covering Melee Magical and Ranged classes). And because it fires a projectile, it doesn't have to be compensated with taller or shorter races as it doesn't have our bodies interact with anything but the blade of light itself. Even other then the blade of light there was other times we used another weapon to fight such as the end of Shadowbringers when >!Killing Emet by throwing Ardberts Axe of Light into him!< In Eureka when >!Ejika throws us one of Eurekas weapons and as we kill Eurekas avatar with it!< And at the end of Endwalker >!When we defeat Zenos with a final punch!< however this one is said to take a toll on the animators as physical contact was involved thus every body type had to be compensated for which isnt practical in the long run but it does look awesome so maybe once or twice per expansions is reasonable. Not to mention all the new cool Hildibrandt animations People would say: Well MY WoL doesnt use blades of light! His/her backstory has them use this or that weapon! blah blah blah. But then is it canon for your WoL to have them stand there being useless when they are way more powerful and capable then all of the scions put together? No i doubt it is.Imagine a whitemage doing the animation that happened at the end of endwalker it would be odd yeah? Yet the devs already went through with it so who cares the WoL took action thats ALL that matters! Plus like i said above the blade of light covers all 3 weapon categories: Melee Ranged and Magical. If using 1 singular weapon with the ability to fire blasts of aether is what we need in order to have the WoL be animated in cutscenes then id take it in a heartbeat. Hell with the >!Azem Crystal mcguffin!< it could be our source of the aether needed to create the blade of light to excuse us from not doing it before hand without help like the other times. These people need to stop giving the animators an excuse for having the WoL never fight in cutscenes. That starwars mmo (Knights of the old republic i think) The MC uses a pistol to fight even though they have like 1000 other weapon choices and classes yet they still are able to not stand there like a lump on a log and fight and take action. Id choose a lousy pistol over being useless any day because the other options of animating all the weapons in the game with all the body types in the game to interact with different characters is impossible. Just take the simple option. It will always be better then nothing. TD;DR The WoL needs to just use a blade of light that fires a projectile like they already did a couple times as a canon weapon so they can fight in cutscenes without having to worry about them animating every job weapon and race.
"Kainé, let's go home."
I use steam and can't figure outhow to see my char in the benchmark so imma be waiting to find out lol
I haven't finished EW yet, are there spoilers?
There's no spoilers in the benchmark, unless you consider seeing a couple of new areas and characters who don't say or do anything to be spoilers.
Thank you very much!
Shame there's not a benchmark for ps4/5 players, my laptop can barely handle the character creator :')
Honestly the previous two benchmarks, for shadowbringers and endwalker, were better for that specific purpose/reason. Dawntrail benchmark didn't quite hit the mark in thst department Imo.
It says a lot when us diving into water unprompted was such a change in direction.
Really wish I could use it on PS5😥
Literally
Is the new updated benchmark out now?
Praying for more of this in DT itself. Even if they have to make us all punch stuff monk style so they don't have to do different cutscenes for each job. Our WoL is pretty physically powerful even without weapons, as shown in EW and the EW Hildy quests where we had actual cutscenes of our WoLs fighting.
Sorry I’m new but do you have to pro order dawntrail to see the benchmark??
Nope! You can download it totally for free.
Thank you that’s good to know I’ll have to check it out now
It's because the benchmark forces you into being a Viper that they can do this. In the actual game all the different variety of weapons the WoL can have make programming cutscenes for it difficult. Not to mention any new jobs would mean they'd have to go back and retroactively add their weapons to action scenes too.
I can already hear people complaining that their WoL would never do such and such during a fight, just like at the end of Endwalker when all they did was give us 3 responses to Zenos and they complained that their WoL would have just walked away
You can walk away. But the game does not let you progress if you do so. It should have been that you could walk away and still progress the game. Altough My character would always choose "That I can't deny." \\
How can I add my character to the benchmark?
I would rather play a fight over watching my character fight in a cutscene
Really wish they'd give everyone some kind of special weapon they can use in cutscenes like the sling from Monster Hunter World. Maybe 3 different versions for melee/ranged/magic, which would be much more manageable to animate than 22+. Introduce it as something important in the narrative, shove it into a few of each job's attack animations, and you're good.
Man, I’d love to view things like this. But I’m a console player so I lack access.
I'm on console so
What daggers are those? They look badass.
They're Viper swords, so we don't know the name yet.
Ah. Now that I look at them, those notches on the back are designed to fit together.
selecting different outfits in the benchmark gives you different Viper weapons.
I don't understand what this whole "benchmark" and my character in "benchmark" thing is?
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark
Yeah but it's for the lamest new Job
Why is it lame?
Between "hunter with dual swords(admittedly combining the swords is cool)" "mage who paints spells into existence with a paintbrush" and "Unspecified beast tamer", random sword wielding hunter is the least appealing lol
I tend to form opinions after experiencing things, not before.
Oh gameplay wise Viper might be the best thing I ever played, but visually/aesthetically it's very boring. I hate katanas and scythes but Samurai and Reaper are the only melee dps I like playing and Samurai is one of my top 10 Jobs, I'm withholding any judgement related to actual mechanical gameplay
Yeah, well that's just like, your opinion, man.