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Final Fantasy XV has some of THE best animation blending I've ever seen

Sakujou

Banned
it looks neat, but nothing to compelling, of you'd ask me. have you seen the agnis philosophy demo? tis was some hot shit. wonder when they will evnetually finish this game and if there will be ever a ff16. these days look really grim and dark since japan stopped their output of quality-consolegames...
 

benzy

Member
Just to be clear, we're talking in the realm of milliseconds here.

Objectively speaking, the more data that has to be processed and displayed (like transitional animations) between the players inputs, the longer the player has to wait between inputs, resulting in increasing unresponsiveness.

This delay isn't necessarily perceptible to everyone right away, but when you compare the responsiveness to other games, it becomes obvious. For example, if you quickly turn Noct around in circles with the analog stick or quickly move him around erratically, he has all kinds of animations that depict his change in momentum. No matter how fast you rotate or move the analog stick, you have to wait for these animations to play themselves out before they reflect your next input. In Super Mario Sunshine, rotating Mario with the analog stick is 1:1. There is no delay. If you change direction, the new frame will override the old frame; you always feel completely 100% in control of Mario.

The point is that there can be a bit of a disconnect between the player and the character which has delayed input due to animations in the game that attempts to mimic realistic human movement, and FFXV is definitely one of those games. The Uncharted games are guilty of this too.

Realistic animations aren't inherently a bad thing. It's generally fine for slower paced games. But I'm sorry, 3rd person action games that have lots of combat need highly responsive controls, and you're just not going to get that if your character has a million animations to perform just from wiggling the analog stick.

Problem with XV's combat is they designed it around the concept of holding a button to attack. If they had actually mapped each attack for each single button press, or a proper dial-a-combo structure, it would feel much better. I agree right now it's not as satisfying as it can be, but I don't agree it's mostly due to animations. Moreover, the transitional animations aren't much of a problem as they created separate attack animations that acts as the transitional animation itself.

evlacsuqlk.gif

They can also speed up the animation to make up for any other transitional delays, which is basically what Armiger does.

Same quick transitional reactions for movement at high speed.
dbyijpgzcr.gif


A lot people seem to be looking at DMC but that game's combat is designed around animation canceling for quickly racking up high combos, not a fair comparison. On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden Black easily still has one of the most impressive and realistic animations and also one of the most responsive controls in the action genre. The game also actually forces you to wait out the combo animation to finish before you can even dodge or start a new attack string, but I doubt anyone would consider this game sluggish or unresponsive.

vdwrqnmcpy.gif
 
A lot people seem to be looking at DMC but that game's combat is designed around animation canceling for quickly racking up high combos, not a fair comparison. On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden Black easily still has one of the most impressive and realistic animations and also one of the most responsive controls in the action genre. The game also actually forces you to wait out the combo animation to finish before you can even dodge or start a new attack string, but I doubt anyone would consider this game sluggish or unresponsive.

Agreed. Maybe it's because I don't play a lot of fighting games or character action, but XV (especially Duscae 2.0) doesn't feel sluggish to me. My brain quickly modeled and accounted for the realistically weighted attack follow through and movement transition and timed my presses accordingly. For me, controller feel is like playing an instrument. Playing faster isn't always more rewarding.

Anyway, now that the combat is being tweaked for manual weapon switching I suspect it will end up feeling a bit more engaging.
 
Just to be clear, we're talking in the realm of milliseconds here.

Objectively speaking, the more data that has to be processed and displayed (like transitional animations) between the players inputs, the longer the player has to wait between inputs, resulting in increasing unresponsiveness.

This delay isn't necessarily perceptible to everyone right away, but when you compare the responsiveness to other games, it becomes obvious. For example, if you quickly turn Noct around in circles with the analog stick or quickly move him around erratically, he has all kinds of animations that depict his change in momentum. No matter how fast you rotate or move the analog stick, you have to wait for these animations to play themselves out before they reflect your next input. In Super Mario Sunshine, rotating Mario with the analog stick is 1:1. There is no delay. If you change direction, the new frame will override the old frame; you always feel completely 100% in control of Mario.

The point is that there can be a bit of a disconnect between the player and the character which has delayed input due to animations in the game that attempts to mimic realistic human movement, and FFXV is definitely one of those games. The Uncharted games are guilty of this too.

Realistic animations aren't inherently a bad thing. It's generally fine for slower paced games. But I'm sorry, 3rd person action games that have lots of combat need highly responsive controls, and you're just not going to get that if your character has a million animations to perform just from wiggling the analog stick.

Unless you are holding the dash button, then no, changing directions is really fast in 2.0. You do have to heavily lean on the stick to get Noctis to walk though, which contrasts heavily with a game like DS2 where the player walking speed is analog to a fault.

Same quick transitional reactions for movement at high speed.
dbyijpgzcr.gif

Oh man, so close. You should see what he looks like when you hold dash and push up on the stick in quick, repeated succession. It looks so ridiculous that I dubbed the animation 'The Duscae Shuffle' in my head, to the tune of the Safety Dance. I die of laughter every time.
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
Even Duscae 2.0 is a largely unfinished and lack of features cut of the game.

Lots has changed already, for example weapon switching is now manual as opposed to automated. The more player input and control the better.

I can't wait to see a cut of the game closer to release. Hurry up March!
 

jett

D-Member
I have to be honest, I'm used to seeing quality animation in big budget games by now, so I'm not really that impressed by FFXV, but it is pretty great.

You can do this ad infinitum.

https://d.maxfile.ro/rmkkzeatis.webm

Bonus befuddled chums included, because they're basically helicopter parents in video game form.

EDIT: Hmmm, its less 'Safety Dance' and more 'Do The Hustle', really.

I liked doing that in the AssCreed games for funsies. It's not anything new. :p
 
I have to be honest, I'm used to seeing quality animation in big budget games by now, so I'm not really that impressed by FFXV, but it is pretty great.



I liked doing that in the AssCreed games for funsies. It's not anything new. :p

I havent seen large open world rpgs with animations like this though. Maybe on pc there is.
 

Fbh

Member
Yeah they are fantastic. And not just the animation, the whole look of the game is really nice (character design aside)

It's a shame that the combat system of the demo is pretty bad. But they seem to have made changes so I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks and feels now after all the player feedback.

I disagree. I absolutely loved the combat in the demo. Sure it's got some issues and took some getting used to, but I found it more enjoyable than Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Dragon Age Inquisition to name a few recent titles, and it was only a demo with lots of missing features/polish.

If they want to give up turn based for pure action based combat they should at least try to make it good. Beeing slightly less mediocre than other games with mediocre combat is no accomplishment
 

wmlk

Member
I'm not the kinda guy who's gonna play around with animations just to see how far I can push it and how natural it looks. That being said, this is probably the only RPG where you can be in character as the protagonist and the rest of the characters just because of the animations. That goes a long way for me, especially with a story driven game.

https://youtu.be/BEFQLcKRq8o?t=9m37s
 

kinggroin

Banned
Animations are cool, but they are also affecting the gameplay now. Devs seem much more focussed on how the game looks than how it plays. Gameplay needs responsiveness, not awkward slow un-responsive animations getting in the way.

Hopefully they sort it out, or it will turn out to be a yet another "An unhealthy obsession with Animations Graphic Quality" affair.

And for as long as its been in development, doesn't look all that great anyway.

Shitty foliage (doesn't move when you pass through it, and generally look horrible), bad texture filtering, shadow pop-in, staticy water, low res shadows, and choppy framerates.

:-/


I guess the in-game animations are cool. Sort of.
 
Problem with XV's combat is they designed it around the concept of holding a button to attack. If they had actually mapped each attack for each single button press, or a proper dial-a-combo structure, it would feel much better. I agree right now it's not as satisfying as it can be, but I don't agree it's mostly due to animations. Moreover, the transitional animations aren't much of a problem as they created separate attack animations that acts as the transitional animation itself.

evlacsuqlk.gif

They can also speed up the animation to make up for any other transitional delays, which is basically what Armiger does.

Same quick transitional reactions for movement at high speed.
dbyijpgzcr.gif


A lot people seem to be looking at DMC but that game's combat is designed around animation canceling for quickly racking up high combos, not a fair comparison. On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden Black easily still has one of the most impressive and realistic animations and also one of the most responsive controls in the action genre. The game also actually forces you to wait out the combo animation to finish before you can even dodge or start a new attack string, but I doubt anyone would consider this game sluggish or unresponsive.

vdwrqnmcpy.gif

Unless you are holding the dash button, then no, changing directions is really fast in 2.0. You do have to heavily lean on the stick to get Noctis to walk though, which contrasts heavily with a game like DS2 where the player walking speed is analog to a fault.



Oh man, so close. You should see what he looks like when you hold dash and push up on the stick in quick, repeated succession. It looks so ridiculous that I dubbed the animation 'The Duscae Shuffle' in my head, to the tune of the Safety Dance. I die of laughter every time.


I should clarify that by 'unresponsiveness' I don't mean 'really slow'. Noct is fast, but there are inherent limitations to his responsiveness (in the degree of tens of milliseconds) due to the detail of his animations. You can speed up the animations, but you can't get around the lag unless his animations can be cancelled, which is not the case in 2.0, as far as I'm aware.

Basically, I'm not saying that the game is sluggish, but I prefer near lagless controls for action games. Hell, I refuse to get an OLED TV all because they don't meet my standards of input lag, and those TVs have some damn good picture quality. I despise input lag and it's very perceptible to me.

For most people, FFXV's responsiveness should be fine though.
 
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