Monstrosity Page Unveiled! (07/25/2013)Follow

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml

Edited, Jul 25th 2013 6:25am by Szabo

The only official comments I can recall Square Enix ever making towards appearance customization for XI was that it was something they couldn't/wouldn't do (at least at the time that they addressed it).

I wouldn't expect any kind of character customization options beyond new hairstyles and at best a barber. Tinkering with skin tone would require SE also going through every piece of gear that shows gear to adjust it to account for the new choice. It works for XIV since they pretty much did that from the start, but XI's textures are pretty archaic, if not marvels in their own right if you consider they manage to stretch 256 pixel images into what we get for gear.

Wanting to be a black dude is different than playing a costume a black dude. Visually, our characters our 6 different textures floating together in sync before you account for weapons. Monsters are 1. That fat dude standing by the Bastok Mins AH is 1. Your hypothetical costume would be one, too. Notice, though, that a lot of these costumes tend to be restricted to town zones where combat isn't possible? Some don't have combat animations associated with them. It isn't quite as simple as "Slap the hume moves on the fat guy, then!" because he do not share the same skeletal structure (6v1) and binding points for the commands.

Pragmatically, Monstrosity is basically SE just reusing active monster resources you see out in the wild, adding a blue magic-esque system to it, and giving players control beyond that of what BST already does. They've given no sign of actually creating new models outside of maybe some UI icons, but that's also a far simpler beast than calibrating animations.

Were more skin variations a request in the past? Probably. PS2 limitations? Tanaka being a racist ************? I dunno. They're not here, but you can't really stomp your foot and discount present complications to the notion because costuming is a way different situation.

Well it's SORTA....KINDA....IN A ROUND ABOUT WAY related, but it's usually the same damn people who continue to throw money at SE even though they have all these seemingly game breaking complaints about it.

Monsters are made to do monster-y things. They get attack/casting animations, things to do when taking damage like flinch, block/parry if applicable, walking, running, and then some. Fundamentally, this is more useful to the game as a more robust monster variety leads to a broader playing experience. All this system does is put players in the monster's skin, which also requires all those animations that have been already created. There's no gear swapping to blink you out because mechanically our player model "doesn't exist" at that moment in time.

Now, some helmets did take hair style into consideration, but it was basically along the lines of "If ponytail is covered, don't render the ponytail" line of thinking. These conditions had to be applied to every piece of headgear with respect to that particular model. If not, you'd get clipping issues, or worse, invisible heads. Could some helmets have fluffy tails not unlike how some chest armor drapes over our legs? Sure. Might this be a polygon issue, though? I don't know. We've yet to really see capes, either.

Random combat-capable costumes just leads me to a simple question, though. Why? What does it accomplish that us in our gear doesn't? What would you actually create? Truth be told, a lot of XI NPCs just borrow our armor resources glued together into a single DAT with some common animation data. And this is something anyone who's played around with any kind of XI ModelViewer and paid attention would've learned. As is, playing as a monster offers a wide variety of skins to inhabit. In the future, if they decide, "Hey, you can play a Mithran Sin Hunter!" then they can add that to the system, too. It really is a simple matter of them recycling materials proven to work instead of spending all this time making new **** just to find out it might make the PS2 explode.

lol pvp {thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass} but I am sure there are plenty of people who will find this content their cup of tea!

Dear SE,

This would have been fun -BEFORE- you made all our friends quit in frustration from all the "updates" you brought out. Also we hate PVP.

Sincerely,

Probably most of Vana'diel with a few exceptions.

It seems to be the best kind of PVP (for me anyway). Simpler than ballista and bastion, and being done in a kind of alternate-reality to your own character. Although im not sure if id like to hop around and ruin peoples day that are just trying to get their mule from Sandy to Jeuno. It would be great if it was a mix between PVP & PVM/PVE.



I don't dislike Pankration, but this should have come out way back when instead of Pankration.



I would be great if we had more options for skin tone, hair color, body adjustment etc... They apparently have it in FFXIV and people love it. As for FFXI, sadly, it would take a LOT of work -as Seriha outlined- to add it into as FFXI as it stands now. If you want it to happen, rally people to your cause with a new thread and contact SE directly. Hijacking an update thread with unrelated upgrades you want has never gotten a good reception in the past, and I doubt it will get better reception in the future.

An "armor" that is solely a tattooed torso is different than wanting tattoos to show no matter what you're wearing. The former is obviously possible, as proven by the weskit, but the latter is something that would indeed be resource intensive if the desire for persistence. Because now all the pieces that show skin have to add an if-then check as well as SE adding the tattoo as a layer where appropriate. This is probably even more complex than just making skin tones a slider with all pieces with skin calling upon that variable.

I've already clarified the differences between monsters and NPCs from a combat/animation perspective. And while there are "unique" NPC models like the old men, the fat, kids, and chubby ladies of various races and flavors, a lot of other NPCs are what we, as players, can wear simplified into one DAT instead of multiple. Of that "inaccessible" list, my simple thought is why? Why do you want to look like them? What is gained by looking like them? If all this parading against SE is more you wanting to, say, look like you're wearing RDM AF while really wearing something else, then we're looking at a totally different issue, but ironically solvable by a means similar to head display. All SE needs to do there is establish a UI so we can set the toggles. Even so, that's a different beast than adding/taking from existing gear because our characters as unique models, even if naked, is a bit of a misnomer. "Naked" is also gear, as anyone who's perhaps tried to DAT mod Alky's has discovered since they use your race's naked hand model.

Edited, Jul 30th 2013 1:18am by Seriha

New monsters don't get solely created to be costume pieces, however. The game is running on a skeleton crew and you want to slog down their art department with requests for sumo wrestler costumes when they could be spending time on making new gear, environments, and monsters for the field with the all associated calibrating of skeletal data on top.

The only thing truly "new thing" to come out of Monstrosity is the UI. Yes, some may consider it a waste of time rearranging existing (KEY WORD) assets into what basically boils down to "monster jobs" and pseudo-PvP, but it also serves as a significantly greater time sink to players and might even give those aching for PvP a better chance than the imbalanced *********** that was Ballista. Spell/Ability use is the same ol' plugging of numbers. You're trying to extract that something mechanically new and controversial has risen and a lie is being perpetrated by SE from this when it hasn't.

I get seeing what one game does and wanting it here, really. More robust character customization is unfortunately one of those "from the ground up" deals that SE chose not to follow for XI, potentially after experimenting with the PS2. If I can't make it any clearer, then let me try to put it this way. You have 10 hume females, each using the 2 head variations of 5 possible head types. Graphically, this demands the DATs for all 10 of those heads to be called into RAM and displayed. Now let's say we add a mole on the cheek as customization. For all ten of these heads, data now has to be sent confirming whether or not they have that mole. This further escalates into eye color, nose width, lip size, and so on that instead of 10 definite graphic options, RAM may now be needed to render hundreds of possibilities. This then leads into the RAM taking priority of rendering if it must be present. People farther away won't be displayed at all. Maybe far terrain takes a quality hit. Monsters might get ultimate priority because they can kill you. There is a mechanical aspect tied to the art that must be respected, and it's also why there's a difference between "chest armor with tattoos" and "tattoos that show up whenever that chunk of skin on the arms is visible".

Perhaps I could say that, despite its unique style, WoW looked like *** even with being released later than FFXI. These options come at a technological cost. Technology and methods of employing it improve, yes Could SE maybe, possibly rework things? I'd honestly expect FFXI:HD first. And I'd simply close this thread on there being bigger fish to fry within the game itself.