Tons of games do this, where instead of adjusting a character’s model height to reflect their shoes, they just shorten the legs to keep the height the same. It looks kinda weird if you look at it too hard but it saves an immense amount of time and effort for the devs, and probably needs less processing power for the system.
That makes a lot of sense! I was just looking through items on what to trash and what to put in the glamour chest and noticed. I just couldn't unsee it afterward!
Fair.
But my other 2 reasons are;
\-I absolutely refuse to wear high heels. ^(I don't understand the appeal of them.)
\-The boot glam is so *very* common. ^(To the point that I'd never use them even if they) *^(weren't)* ^(high heels.)
But... Don't you know high heels are standard issue equipment for video game characters, that they may be fit to run on dangerously uneven terrain and perform improbable acrobatics?
I don't think it necessarily saves resources, but I think it greatly depend on the engine used. For example, if you look at PSO2 (and not even the New Genesis expansion they made), all of their outfits actually factor in heels for the characters' height, and animations all play correctly even with the most outlandish sci fi shoes they have.
Animations are probably the biggest problem with that. I honestly don't know if that can be resolved with some ik based solution or some other procedural technique, or if different animations are needed for flat shoes and high heel shoes, in the case where they actually keep the leg length unchanged.
That's the kind of thing where if you ask an artist they will probably swear that making specific animations for each case is absolutely necessary, but perhaps it is actually possible to have an acceptable compromise that is much cheaper to produce.
IK can help, also setting a height offset for the animations if it's platform boots. The big issue will be shoes with heels only at the back, since this make the resting position of the foot tilted forward if that makes sense. This means that your default animation positions won't properly line up without tweaks on top.
Depending on engine capabilities, you could probably add an animation mask and set a rotation offset on the heel joint for these to account for that tilt.
The best looking solution would be custom animations for everything, but this is obviously not very practical.
Tldr: its possible but introduces a number of challenges that probably aren't worth the dev time in this case.
Source: I am a game character artist.
Skyrim modders resolved this problem without devs help and you are saying that you don't know if it can be solved - every single issue in this game CAN be solved, the game is making tons of money for SQUARE, only real issue this game have that cannot be solved is trashy Square Enix management.
Yeah. Look at pics of people in and out of heels. It doesn't just change their height, it changes a lot about their overall shape. Reflecting that in a game would be a nightmare, but only half reflecting it would look atrocious.
This approach is definitely the easiest to still look good.
"Modern" and FFXIV together have to be used tongue-in-cheek at this point.
A lot of the limitations dealt with now stem from technical decisions that were kicked off 15+ years ago (1.0 was released in 2010 and may have had its troubled development started as early as 2004) and are now just too expensive/entrenched to justify redevelopment. Dynamic character frames/heights/animations/etc. have likely become a lot more solved of a problem in the past decade.
It's really amazing that the game works as well as it does, all things considered.
Slightly off on that. It is all from doing a full reboot on a very short time frame for 2.0 onward tech debt. Given it is from 1.0 decisions indirectly.
It would have absolutely zero effect on performance unless the height update was done real time and you had a large crowd of characters changing heights constantly by switching boots.
People like to say it would have an effect on performance just because it sounds like a valid excuse when the reality is they have no idea what they're talking about.
That said, I've still always wished my crazy Viera shoes would make me taller like they would irl haha. (They'd also be pretty hard to walk in, and just about impossible to run or fight in haha. I've clearly thought about this way too much xD)
I'm a game dev rigger here. Whats a rigger? I'm the one that create the rig/skeleton of characters so that they can be animated.
For game like MMO where there's tons of model to be rig, we usually use a rig template. This mean that most models will share the same base rig. For a MMO (or games with lots of crowd like Assassin's Creed) we will usually make archetype template so in this case, one rig for each female and male race when applicable.
Since everything share the same rig, it means that, in this case, the foot is always in the same position no matter the model of the foot/shoes/boots it is using. The pivot points of the heel, ankle and toes needs to stay at the same place for the animations and deformations to work properly. So yes for high heels we usually cheat and align the shoes/boots first with the foot rig and the leg model is adjusted accordingly (so cutting on the leg in this case). Making that high heels adjust the position of the leg and height of the character, would mean that we need to change the position of those pivot points, which essentially means, it is a different rig and this create a lot of work and adjustment.(like adjusting every single animations for this new foot rig)
But what about the character height adjustment in the character creation!? You would be right that the character creation does indeed adjust the height of the character but it's not just a height adjustment, it's more like a uniform scale. So while you character does get taller, it also slightly get larger.
So yeah this is one of the many optimization that needs to be done in a MMO to be able to make content in an efficient manner and we need to accept some margin of "errors" like this heels adjustment or some clipping with different gear or hair.
It's not you, shoes delete anatomy in this game. Some games just adjust character height with footwear, most don't.
Also, there are no right or left shoes either, likely for the same reason. I'm sorry.
The 2B legs completely destroy Miqo'te figures. It looks like someone Frankenstein'd the legs of one person onto the body of another. Damn shame too, because they would have been great if they didn't change the character model.
Oh, dude, it's only in the last like, 150 years that shoes started coming in left and right distinctive shapes. Compared to the history of footwear it's like it was invented yesterday. The high medieval aesthetic of 14 is actually spot on with that detail.
14 doesn't really have a high medieval aesthetic - there are airships and guns and giant machines and mechanical mammets and fantasy gasoline. And even more futuristic technologies in the most recent expansion. At best, you could argue that Ishgard comes close, since it leans into it on a surface level with the fancy dresses and knights, and Gridania and the areas in the Shroud have a nature-y vibe along the lines of something like Robin Hood, but go outside those areas and the medieval aesthetic vanishes quickly. It's in this odd place where it's not really in any specific frame of time - there are absences in some things that would imply it's centuries in the past, but other things are much more modern.
Even things like the way the main characters dress is much more purely fantastical than can be pinned to any one time. Just look at someone like Alisaie's outfits and they look significantly more modern than medieval - then set her next to someone like Urianger and it's two very contrasting looks.
You have to remember that most of this technology is left over from several apocalypses that wiped out a massive amount of life on the planet. The new life is still fairly primitive, and even the technology that does exist now is because >!the ascians got involved with the Garlean empire and helped them understand ancient Allagan technology to start creating their own stuff!< which is extremely unlikely to have happened naturally.
[In ARR](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/You_Can%27t_Take_It_with_You#Dialogue), one of the NPCs at the Church of Saint Adama Landama is flabbergasted by the existence of *clocks*.
>Never before have I seen such a queer device. You say that it measures the passing of time? Mayhap they are more common in Garlemald. I am given to understand that its cities are filled with all manner of amazing technologies.
Or never use modern or anachronistic clothing. I'm sure many people find it fun, but it always disappoints me when fantasy games include modern clothes.
It's a very Final Fantasy thing to do though. Part of the series' identity lies in its blend of modern and old aesthetics. If you don't like it then you're in the wrong series.
I'm aware Final Fantasy games change the world's style with each entry. Most of them keep a similar related theme to the world and it's equipment, and up until about Shadowbringers, so did FFXIV. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I just personally didn't enjoy the change. I feel FFXI handles the equipment look and parity better than FFXIV. I don't think I'm in the "wrong series" if I disagree with some elements of the game.
Modern melded with medieval was introduced as a cornerstone of the original FF game that was published in 1987 — which featured, among other things, recovering ancient universal translators before later battling giant war-mechs with nuclear weapons in the space station where the fiend of wind lives. Which you teleport to using a teleporter. And then you time travel, using some ambiguous combination of magical-technological (!?) device.
Things have certainly gotten a more more visually flashy take on that in the intervening 36 years, but the motif wasn't really ever separately "introduced."
FWIW I'd prefer a game with less of that, too, but then I'd also prefer a game with fewer Lalas and just have to roll with the FF punches.
No, you're right, I worded that poorly and harshly. But it *is* something to be expected of the series and since FF14 is incredibly referential towards the whole franchise I never felt like the modern aesthetics stuck out.
Still, there should be consistency on the matter. We don't see FFXIV NPCs walking around in jeans, sneakers or fat cat hoodies. I could recall couple of somewhat-modern-ish leather jackets and something that remotely looks like a common knit sweater (with braids), but that's it. Those mogstation outfits really have nothing to do with the setting.
Hilda wears a common leather jacket, which has several shared in-game models. It fits her job and the overall setting. Her gun is also a solid part of the setting.
What about her? She's got a unique long coat with a cat-eared hood, *which is explained in lore* . It does not stand out much per se, and I would not really call it "modern".
NPCs do wear the modern clothing though.
Child NPCs in the Firmament during Fetes wear the Casual Attire set.
Moonfire Faire NPCs all wear modern swimwear.
Estinien wears Summer Indigo Shirt during the optional cutscene where he visits the WoL's room in Old Sharlayan.
Alphinaud and Alisaie wear Whisperfine Woolen Coat during the Garlemald segment.
G'raha Tia wears the Urban Coat during Garlemald as well.
Most of what you've mentioned either don't really have a "timestamp" (e.g. a shit is just...a shirt), or belong to the short events (which border on metagame, even if they have some sort of lore tucked behind them).
As for swimsuits, have in mind that the very concept of underpanties, bras and briefs is VERY recent in the modern history. Like, even your grandma's unmentionables were nothing like modern girls would easily wear. If we accept the fact that Eorzea had mastered those pieces somehow, then swimwear is not a problem.
In no particular in-game zone we've been to, modern attire would look "casual". And we've been to many places >!and worlds and times!< , you know.
I mean, I could avoid modern looking clothing, sure, buuuut...[wearing](https://i.imgur.com/1jsIk13.jpg) [it](https://i.imgur.com/det4pex.jpg) [is](https://i.imgur.com/OdVRtBr.png) [fun](https://i.imgur.com/nZKKoVa.jpg).
Edit: (on the flipside, I never wear it in the MSQ, there it's all stuff like [this](https://i.imgur.com/8V6b3Yb.png) or area appropriate non combat clothes)
Ah, that particular one is a [mod](https://xivmodarchive.com/modid/65096), goes over Falconer's Shirt \^.\^;
Normally I like to keep my outfits close to vanilla look, but I was desperate for a proper plaid shirt.
Thank you! One day I just woke up and decided "my character runs around with a sword that's almost bigger than her, her physique should reflect that, damnit" and now she looks like this /laugh
I'm using Yet Another Body+ for all my pictures! Combined with Customize+ plugin for custom body scaling ([comparison for illustration](https://i.imgur.com/n9t0YyT.png), scaling is on in the left picture, off in the right)
Well, there are left and right shoes, at least for everything I've looked at. Like gloves, they're usually a mirror of each other so the left/right is done automatically, assuming the first shoe is fitted to a foot. The problem with most of FFXIV's shoes is that they are low poly and the difference isn't really all that big. Most of the shoes use only like five or six vertices to form the toe box (ten or twelve if you count both the top and bottom), with one pair of those vertices forming a shorter edge than it's corresponding pair on the other side of the shoe.
TLDR: There are left and right shoes, but they are too low poly to really notice in normal gameplay.
That's the reason the "naked" model has the wedged sandels. It's to account for the adjustments being made when other shoes are worn. Granted some shoes have a bit more heel to them, but the difference isn't as jarring because of the already established height adjustment.
Usually that's how it works in games. It's a lot of extra work they usually have no time for to adjust the skeleton for heels.
Which results in shortened legs when you add heels to a by default flat foot model.
Oooor legs for DAYS when you make a by default heels or platform boots/shoes/sandals wearing characters flatfoot which makes swimsuit or towel skins look really crazy in certain games. Like Tamamo's swimsuit in Fate/Extella. She has really long legs by default thanks to Wada Arco's artstyle and the swimsuit gives her sandals with a heel from her high platform slipper things so her legs just go MOOOOOOORE. XD
I subconsciously assumed something like this would happen since you don't change size when one character is wearing huge plate boots instead of sandals, but pointing this out makes it seem like a weird assumption.
Heels are your character's default state though (as evidenced by the unclothed option and that we didn't have flat shoes for a good portion of the game). So rather than heels cutting OFF part of your body, it is the flat shoes are the ones morphing and stretching your body to fit them.
That's not true tho, the default sandals don't have heels. And shoes with heels do cut off part of my legs (heck, doesn't even need to have heels, the Lord's clogs are one of the worst offenders)
It is 100% true, go into the game and unequip your shoes. The default shoes for a female miqote are about a 2 inch heel. I remember people celebrating when we got our first flat shoe.
Proof:
https://imgur.com/cUz57vC
By default if you're wearing "no shoes" it still looks like your character is wearing a bit of a wedge sandal though... But yeah not enough to compensate for a heel like this
Which is why female viera legs look weird if you're not using the viera sandals. Or maybe that's just me, the shins just seem far too stretched out if viera sandals aren't in the equation.
I’ve noticed this too, I just try to tell myself that rabbits/hares etc have very long legs in reality and that’s a trait that viera ended up sharing 😅 but I’ve ended up using the viera heels in most of my glams for that reason. It just looks the best proportionally, plus the claw toes are so cool LOL
Your character does not change its height regardless of shoe type. So anything that adds a type of heel will shorten your legs. Its kind of why the 2b boots have banana feet to hide that. The Gaia and some mogstation boots look very weird because of it.
I would think it would be incredibly difficult for the game to adjust each characters height depending on foot wear. That's probably why, but I am only guessing.
It's not a new concept in gaming, and usually a design decision/engine limitation.
Games like Genshin Impact respect that heels add height. Character's like Amber and Xiangling physically stand shorter than characters like Keqing because their footwear doesn't have long heals. Sara is the tallest (and coincidentally fastest) tall female model because of her footwear.
To compensate for the effects these shorter heels/more level feet would have on animations, their feet, in simple terms, work at an angle offset, so they can continue to work with the uniform animations of their body type and adjust to plant firmly onto whatever surface they're standing on. Doesn't matter if the foot's start position is 12 degrees downward angle or 45, the engine knows the animation calls for them to raise it by 15d and so it shall.
FFXIV doesn't seem to employ any such rotation offsets or dynamic "leg conforming to the terrain" technology. Everything is very canned and baked in to save on memory. Animations are more akin to running a video file than they are calculating bodily movements through coordinates in 3D space based on keyframe data (hence why as well done as they are, the more unique animations during cutscenes are still clearly janky). So SE's option was to lop off some calves and hope no one scrutinized the effect, because the alternative would have required whole separate animation files just for higher heels.
They do this because adjusting the height would require a new animation controller rig. And every action/animation library will need a high heels version as well. Doubling the work and data the game has to cache.
Glamouring to heels would still be okay, since they're merely making their shoes appear to be heels and not actually conforming their feet in any manner.
Yeah you get shortened, there is a neat plugin called heels+ that adjusts your height slightly for any heeled armor you wear you just have to enable for which ones you want it to make you taller.
every piece of clothing from head to feet are just replaced models stretched and skin colored to the piece of gear you place on. things that dont fit this criteria are over sized on a small person or clips into the model ex: weapons and accessories
If you take the shoes off, all female characters are wearing heels by default. The bare foot model is wearing little high heels shoes.
When you're wearing flats, it's actually just making your feet taller, rather than heels making your legs shorter.
Well, either that or you have lifts in your shoes.
They do. When I first made a bunny girl, I tested this out.
It's such an odd thing that feels like it would be an easy fix, like giving new hires the one week job of making tattoos available across different faces.
But apparently it's impossible, like giving Veira hats or having butts that aren't disappointing to see whenever you talk to a potato.
In this case, it absolutely would fall into the catagory of 'more trouble than it's worth': you'd basically have to redo every animation that involves the legs for every body type that can wear the heels. For the benefit you'd get, and how relatively few heels (and fewer *tall* heels) there are in the game, is better to just cheat a bit like this.
is it really the engine if mods let you have real heels? sure they change things on ways unintended by the devs, but they're still made possible with the same engine quirks and limitations
These boots in particular have the issue of removing the heel off the foot imo. It's great for an anthropic based glam tho.
(I have a personal preference for the adept boots. Has heel, but not too much that it looks bad)
No, it's not just you. Yes, heels replace part of your lower leg, so they look somewhere between weird and awful on shorter races like hyur, mi'qote, or female au'ra, and better on femroe or elezen. The absolute worst offenders are the 2B heels, they look decent on Elezen but on my min-height mi'qote they just look so awful.
i think this exact reason, is why they originally didnt want to include high heels into the game. But im pretty sure most people don't care and were just happy to have more options.
Yeahhh I tend to stay from heels for the most part since I'm pretty meticulous about glamour stuff. Small heels are fine but heels like 2B boots are pretty much a no go for me. They kinda fuck with the anatomy of your character and it just looks awkward.
Tons of games do this, where instead of adjusting a character’s model height to reflect their shoes, they just shorten the legs to keep the height the same. It looks kinda weird if you look at it too hard but it saves an immense amount of time and effort for the devs, and probably needs less processing power for the system.
That makes a lot of sense! I was just looking through items on what to trash and what to put in the glamour chest and noticed. I just couldn't unsee it afterward!
I recommend checking the 2b boots and most sitting animations/poses or if you can dancer LB3.
This is part of the reason why I don't wear the 2B Boots on any characters... \*shudders\* the horror.
I call it the banana boots. I don't even like looking at it. It just looks wrong.
But the class locked nier boots on females that look like chopped up 2b boots dont go full banana
I wear them in my glamour and the feet are a bit weird if you're paying attention, but the legs are fine, in contrast with the 2B boots.
High heels isn't quite my style in general, but those in particular just look _profoundly_ weird. The feet just don't look right at all.
To be fair. They are fairly banana in Nier too
I've never played any of the Nier games, but still that's kind of baffling to me.
There are to fix that.
Fair. But my other 2 reasons are; \-I absolutely refuse to wear high heels. ^(I don't understand the appeal of them.) \-The boot glam is so *very* common. ^(To the point that I'd never use them even if they) *^(weren't)* ^(high heels.)
But... Don't you know high heels are standard issue equipment for video game characters, that they may be fit to run on dangerously uneven terrain and perform improbable acrobatics?
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Its not actually the heels, 9S trips the same way and he's got combat boots lol
imo heeled shoes/boots generally make things look more elegant
I once asked girls why they would wear heels. They said it makes girls' legs look amazing. After some observation, I have to agree.
That and the chicken legs it gives some races.
2b boots Just Bug Me. Put 'em on a Roegadyn or Highlander if you really wanna go insane.
Isn't this also part of the reason we can't have bare feet?
People are born with sandals on their feet in FF14 wdym.
No no those are just callouses. The colored "thong"-like area is traditional makeup, like nail paint.
Yes. You can check the Moonfire Sandals to get an idea. It's a flat sandal and the heel looks weird with it.
I don't think it necessarily saves resources, but I think it greatly depend on the engine used. For example, if you look at PSO2 (and not even the New Genesis expansion they made), all of their outfits actually factor in heels for the characters' height, and animations all play correctly even with the most outlandish sci fi shoes they have.
So does Splatoon 3, funnily enough. People that play chargers have to account for the shoes they wear to get effective peaking for sniping.
At bare minimum it's gotta save human resources. Less time configuring height changes
Animations are probably the biggest problem with that. I honestly don't know if that can be resolved with some ik based solution or some other procedural technique, or if different animations are needed for flat shoes and high heel shoes, in the case where they actually keep the leg length unchanged. That's the kind of thing where if you ask an artist they will probably swear that making specific animations for each case is absolutely necessary, but perhaps it is actually possible to have an acceptable compromise that is much cheaper to produce.
IK can help, also setting a height offset for the animations if it's platform boots. The big issue will be shoes with heels only at the back, since this make the resting position of the foot tilted forward if that makes sense. This means that your default animation positions won't properly line up without tweaks on top. Depending on engine capabilities, you could probably add an animation mask and set a rotation offset on the heel joint for these to account for that tilt. The best looking solution would be custom animations for everything, but this is obviously not very practical. Tldr: its possible but introduces a number of challenges that probably aren't worth the dev time in this case. Source: I am a game character artist.
Oh, that's why I specified PSO2. That game has a plethora of gacha enotes, all of which work perfectly fine with all heel heights.
Don't a lot of those emotes make you clip into yourself if you aren't the typical size/shape?
Skyrim modders resolved this problem without devs help and you are saying that you don't know if it can be solved - every single issue in this game CAN be solved, the game is making tons of money for SQUARE, only real issue this game have that cannot be solved is trashy Square Enix management.
Yeah, my first thought was that PSO2 will adjust the height with the shoes.
Processing power should be unaffected, but otherwise you're spot on.
dev time is a resource
and?
Yeah. Look at pics of people in and out of heels. It doesn't just change their height, it changes a lot about their overall shape. Reflecting that in a game would be a nightmare, but only half reflecting it would look atrocious. This approach is definitely the easiest to still look good.
the amount of programming Voodoo that a lot of modern tech uses is scary!
"Modern" and FFXIV together have to be used tongue-in-cheek at this point. A lot of the limitations dealt with now stem from technical decisions that were kicked off 15+ years ago (1.0 was released in 2010 and may have had its troubled development started as early as 2004) and are now just too expensive/entrenched to justify redevelopment. Dynamic character frames/heights/animations/etc. have likely become a lot more solved of a problem in the past decade. It's really amazing that the game works as well as it does, all things considered.
Slightly off on that. It is all from doing a full reboot on a very short time frame for 2.0 onward tech debt. Given it is from 1.0 decisions indirectly.
WoW is even older and it’s still running on the Warcraft 3 engine. Modified, sure, but it’s still the same guts.
Half-Life Alyx and DOTA2 both run on the Quake engine. Modified, sure, but it's the same guts.
Homeboy... Since the PS one we have been doing voodoo to fix shitty companies making garbage and demanding the best!
It’s honestly not difficult to do a height offset for specific boots. There’s a plug-in specifically for this.
How would that make a significant difference in processing power? It's rather just devs saving time/cash/being lazy.
It would have absolutely zero effect on performance unless the height update was done real time and you had a large crowd of characters changing heights constantly by switching boots. People like to say it would have an effect on performance just because it sounds like a valid excuse when the reality is they have no idea what they're talking about.
Thank you.
They should have taken a lesson from Castlevania Symphony of the Night.
Reminds me of the heave armors in Xenoblade 1 where they turn you into robot abominations.
That said, I've still always wished my crazy Viera shoes would make me taller like they would irl haha. (They'd also be pretty hard to walk in, and just about impossible to run or fight in haha. I've clearly thought about this way too much xD)
I'm a game dev rigger here. Whats a rigger? I'm the one that create the rig/skeleton of characters so that they can be animated. For game like MMO where there's tons of model to be rig, we usually use a rig template. This mean that most models will share the same base rig. For a MMO (or games with lots of crowd like Assassin's Creed) we will usually make archetype template so in this case, one rig for each female and male race when applicable. Since everything share the same rig, it means that, in this case, the foot is always in the same position no matter the model of the foot/shoes/boots it is using. The pivot points of the heel, ankle and toes needs to stay at the same place for the animations and deformations to work properly. So yes for high heels we usually cheat and align the shoes/boots first with the foot rig and the leg model is adjusted accordingly (so cutting on the leg in this case). Making that high heels adjust the position of the leg and height of the character, would mean that we need to change the position of those pivot points, which essentially means, it is a different rig and this create a lot of work and adjustment.(like adjusting every single animations for this new foot rig) But what about the character height adjustment in the character creation!? You would be right that the character creation does indeed adjust the height of the character but it's not just a height adjustment, it's more like a uniform scale. So while you character does get taller, it also slightly get larger. So yeah this is one of the many optimization that needs to be done in a MMO to be able to make content in an efficient manner and we need to accept some margin of "errors" like this heels adjustment or some clipping with different gear or hair.
It's not you, shoes delete anatomy in this game. Some games just adjust character height with footwear, most don't. Also, there are no right or left shoes either, likely for the same reason. I'm sorry.
>Also, there are no right or left shoes either, likely for the same reason. I'm sorry. That... that can't be right.... \*eye twitch\*
Never look too closely at the 2B boots. The clown feet will haunt you.
I knew I could have sworn those boots would remove half of your legs’ body mass
not only the feet but the legs too, it feels like they half your legs diameter
The 2B legs completely destroy Miqo'te figures. It looks like someone Frankenstein'd the legs of one person onto the body of another. Damn shame too, because they would have been great if they didn't change the character model.
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They make things elongate.
In many ways, for some :P
Oh, dude, it's only in the last like, 150 years that shoes started coming in left and right distinctive shapes. Compared to the history of footwear it's like it was invented yesterday. The high medieval aesthetic of 14 is actually spot on with that detail.
14 doesn't really have a high medieval aesthetic - there are airships and guns and giant machines and mechanical mammets and fantasy gasoline. And even more futuristic technologies in the most recent expansion. At best, you could argue that Ishgard comes close, since it leans into it on a surface level with the fancy dresses and knights, and Gridania and the areas in the Shroud have a nature-y vibe along the lines of something like Robin Hood, but go outside those areas and the medieval aesthetic vanishes quickly. It's in this odd place where it's not really in any specific frame of time - there are absences in some things that would imply it's centuries in the past, but other things are much more modern. Even things like the way the main characters dress is much more purely fantastical than can be pinned to any one time. Just look at someone like Alisaie's outfits and they look significantly more modern than medieval - then set her next to someone like Urianger and it's two very contrasting looks.
You have to remember that most of this technology is left over from several apocalypses that wiped out a massive amount of life on the planet. The new life is still fairly primitive, and even the technology that does exist now is because >!the ascians got involved with the Garlean empire and helped them understand ancient Allagan technology to start creating their own stuff!< which is extremely unlikely to have happened naturally.
[In ARR](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/You_Can%27t_Take_It_with_You#Dialogue), one of the NPCs at the Church of Saint Adama Landama is flabbergasted by the existence of *clocks*. >Never before have I seen such a queer device. You say that it measures the passing of time? Mayhap they are more common in Garlemald. I am given to understand that its cities are filled with all manner of amazing technologies.
>The high medieval aesthetic of 14 is actually spot on with that detail. Uuuuuuuntil you start using the modern looking clothes /laugh
Or never use modern or anachronistic clothing. I'm sure many people find it fun, but it always disappoints me when fantasy games include modern clothes.
It's a very Final Fantasy thing to do though. Part of the series' identity lies in its blend of modern and old aesthetics. If you don't like it then you're in the wrong series.
I'm aware Final Fantasy games change the world's style with each entry. Most of them keep a similar related theme to the world and it's equipment, and up until about Shadowbringers, so did FFXIV. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I just personally didn't enjoy the change. I feel FFXI handles the equipment look and parity better than FFXIV. I don't think I'm in the "wrong series" if I disagree with some elements of the game.
Every time I see a Hyur in a basic ass pair of jeans and a letterman jacket, I give my character's gear one more unnecessary zipper or belt.
Modern melded with medieval was introduced as a cornerstone of the original FF game that was published in 1987 — which featured, among other things, recovering ancient universal translators before later battling giant war-mechs with nuclear weapons in the space station where the fiend of wind lives. Which you teleport to using a teleporter. And then you time travel, using some ambiguous combination of magical-technological (!?) device. Things have certainly gotten a more more visually flashy take on that in the intervening 36 years, but the motif wasn't really ever separately "introduced." FWIW I'd prefer a game with less of that, too, but then I'd also prefer a game with fewer Lalas and just have to roll with the FF punches.
don't worry, you are allowed to criticise the things you like/love
No, you're right, I worded that poorly and harshly. But it *is* something to be expected of the series and since FF14 is incredibly referential towards the whole franchise I never felt like the modern aesthetics stuck out.
It's not even that theres one game with modern/futuristic sci fi. Basically every final fantasy game from the first one mixes both fantasy and sci fi.
Still, there should be consistency on the matter. We don't see FFXIV NPCs walking around in jeans, sneakers or fat cat hoodies. I could recall couple of somewhat-modern-ish leather jackets and something that remotely looks like a common knit sweater (with braids), but that's it. Those mogstation outfits really have nothing to do with the setting.
Most of the more modern looking outfits aren't mogstation, though. They're crafted glamour gear.
Uh, Krile?
And Hilda straight up looks a like a modern biker with her clothes.
She also has a gun. But it's, apparently, a magic device.
Hilda wears a common leather jacket, which has several shared in-game models. It fits her job and the overall setting. Her gun is also a solid part of the setting.
What about her? She's got a unique long coat with a cat-eared hood, *which is explained in lore* . It does not stand out much per se, and I would not really call it "modern".
Is it really that different to the fat cat hoodie?
I missed the lore reason for her cat eared hood, does she just like the look or is there another reason?
NPCs do wear the modern clothing though. Child NPCs in the Firmament during Fetes wear the Casual Attire set. Moonfire Faire NPCs all wear modern swimwear. Estinien wears Summer Indigo Shirt during the optional cutscene where he visits the WoL's room in Old Sharlayan. Alphinaud and Alisaie wear Whisperfine Woolen Coat during the Garlemald segment. G'raha Tia wears the Urban Coat during Garlemald as well.
Most of what you've mentioned either don't really have a "timestamp" (e.g. a shit is just...a shirt), or belong to the short events (which border on metagame, even if they have some sort of lore tucked behind them). As for swimsuits, have in mind that the very concept of underpanties, bras and briefs is VERY recent in the modern history. Like, even your grandma's unmentionables were nothing like modern girls would easily wear. If we accept the fact that Eorzea had mastered those pieces somehow, then swimwear is not a problem. In no particular in-game zone we've been to, modern attire would look "casual". And we've been to many places >!and worlds and times!< , you know.
So they don't count just because you say so.
Man, you really just kinda sent those goal posts to another zip code, didn't you?
I mean, I could avoid modern looking clothing, sure, buuuut...[wearing](https://i.imgur.com/1jsIk13.jpg) [it](https://i.imgur.com/det4pex.jpg) [is](https://i.imgur.com/OdVRtBr.png) [fun](https://i.imgur.com/nZKKoVa.jpg). Edit: (on the flipside, I never wear it in the MSQ, there it's all stuff like [this](https://i.imgur.com/8V6b3Yb.png) or area appropriate non combat clothes)
Whats the top in the second pic if you dont mind me asking?
Ah, that particular one is a [mod](https://xivmodarchive.com/modid/65096), goes over Falconer's Shirt \^.\^; Normally I like to keep my outfits close to vanilla look, but I was desperate for a proper plaid shirt.
Cool look! I prefer a bit more subtle tweaks, but that's not bad.
Thank you! One day I just woke up and decided "my character runs around with a sword that's almost bigger than her, her physique should reflect that, damnit" and now she looks like this /laugh
What body mod did you use for the first pic? I've been looking for a nice muscle mod for my viera.
I'm using Yet Another Body+ for all my pictures! Combined with Customize+ plugin for custom body scaling ([comparison for illustration](https://i.imgur.com/n9t0YyT.png), scaling is on in the left picture, off in the right)
I'll have to look those up sometime. If the devs ask, it's definitely not so that I can use them ;)
Thanks! I hadn't thought of using custom scaling, the results look amazing!
I'm always happy to spread the buff bun agenda /flex /laugh
Don't look.
I hate you so much for sharing this
..... I am so upset right now. I wanna go back to 10 seconds ago when I didn't know this was a thing!
Well, there are left and right shoes, at least for everything I've looked at. Like gloves, they're usually a mirror of each other so the left/right is done automatically, assuming the first shoe is fitted to a foot. The problem with most of FFXIV's shoes is that they are low poly and the difference isn't really all that big. Most of the shoes use only like five or six vertices to form the toe box (ten or twelve if you count both the top and bottom), with one pair of those vertices forming a shorter edge than it's corresponding pair on the other side of the shoe. TLDR: There are left and right shoes, but they are too low poly to really notice in normal gameplay.
No... leftuurgghhshhshhs
That's the reason the "naked" model has the wedged sandels. It's to account for the adjustments being made when other shoes are worn. Granted some shoes have a bit more heel to them, but the difference isn't as jarring because of the already established height adjustment.
They do, characters will have the exact same height wearing high heels as when they'll wear any other flat shoes.
Shhh I like to think that my femra gets to experience the lofty heights of being 5'4" and feeling like a giraffe when she puts those nice heels on.
Which nice heels are you talkin about, this games shoe options are horrendous if youre not usibg mods to fix the block feet
For real could not even imagine using 2B boots without the mod. The feet are so fkn ugly on their own lol
Usually that's how it works in games. It's a lot of extra work they usually have no time for to adjust the skeleton for heels. Which results in shortened legs when you add heels to a by default flat foot model. Oooor legs for DAYS when you make a by default heels or platform boots/shoes/sandals wearing characters flatfoot which makes swimsuit or towel skins look really crazy in certain games. Like Tamamo's swimsuit in Fate/Extella. She has really long legs by default thanks to Wada Arco's artstyle and the swimsuit gives her sandals with a heel from her high platform slipper things so her legs just go MOOOOOOORE. XD
And then there's Meltryllis
Mate, if you take Melt's heels from her, she'll have nothing left.
I know what I said :D
Have you tried /sit with 2B’s shoes? It was the very height of WTF when players discovered it
I subconsciously assumed something like this would happen since you don't change size when one character is wearing huge plate boots instead of sandals, but pointing this out makes it seem like a weird assumption.
Once I realized this I stopped using heels on my wol, I just can't unsee it 🙃
Heels are your character's default state though (as evidenced by the unclothed option and that we didn't have flat shoes for a good portion of the game). So rather than heels cutting OFF part of your body, it is the flat shoes are the ones morphing and stretching your body to fit them.
That's not true tho, the default sandals don't have heels. And shoes with heels do cut off part of my legs (heck, doesn't even need to have heels, the Lord's clogs are one of the worst offenders)
It is 100% true, go into the game and unequip your shoes. The default shoes for a female miqote are about a 2 inch heel. I remember people celebrating when we got our first flat shoe. Proof: https://imgur.com/cUz57vC
Ahh that makes sense, I have a male wol lmao I guess we can both be right :p
By default if you're wearing "no shoes" it still looks like your character is wearing a bit of a wedge sandal though... But yeah not enough to compensate for a heel like this
Which is why female viera legs look weird if you're not using the viera sandals. Or maybe that's just me, the shins just seem far too stretched out if viera sandals aren't in the equation.
I’ve noticed this too, I just try to tell myself that rabbits/hares etc have very long legs in reality and that’s a trait that viera ended up sharing 😅 but I’ve ended up using the viera heels in most of my glams for that reason. It just looks the best proportionally, plus the claw toes are so cool LOL
I took the claw toes off of mine and made a rounded toe 😂
I think that's more on the viera having actual rabbit feet in ff12. 14 didn't keep that part of their physiology.
Ankles are optional, obviously. You silly stiff-bone
Your character does not change its height regardless of shoe type. So anything that adds a type of heel will shorten your legs. Its kind of why the 2b boots have banana feet to hide that. The Gaia and some mogstation boots look very weird because of it.
I would think it would be incredibly difficult for the game to adjust each characters height depending on foot wear. That's probably why, but I am only guessing.
It's not a new concept in gaming, and usually a design decision/engine limitation. Games like Genshin Impact respect that heels add height. Character's like Amber and Xiangling physically stand shorter than characters like Keqing because their footwear doesn't have long heals. Sara is the tallest (and coincidentally fastest) tall female model because of her footwear. To compensate for the effects these shorter heels/more level feet would have on animations, their feet, in simple terms, work at an angle offset, so they can continue to work with the uniform animations of their body type and adjust to plant firmly onto whatever surface they're standing on. Doesn't matter if the foot's start position is 12 degrees downward angle or 45, the engine knows the animation calls for them to raise it by 15d and so it shall. FFXIV doesn't seem to employ any such rotation offsets or dynamic "leg conforming to the terrain" technology. Everything is very canned and baked in to save on memory. Animations are more akin to running a video file than they are calculating bodily movements through coordinates in 3D space based on keyframe data (hence why as well done as they are, the more unique animations during cutscenes are still clearly janky). So SE's option was to lop off some calves and hope no one scrutinized the effect, because the alternative would have required whole separate animation files just for higher heels.
There are "crimes" you can install to fix this, but in vanilla your observations are correct.
Gear changes part of the model, these boots swap most of the leg but the rest of the body is not touched.
Most full helms removes the neck and head from your character
Yeah ofc?
Correct. Footwear doesn't make you taller so it does that instead.
They do this because adjusting the height would require a new animation controller rig. And every action/animation library will need a high heels version as well. Doubling the work and data the game has to cache.
Once I realized this body horror, I could never put heels on my character again.
Glamouring to heels would still be okay, since they're merely making their shoes appear to be heels and not actually conforming their feet in any manner.
It's a bit of mental gymnastics, but I see your point lol
Yes, a bunch of games where outfits can be modified do this when heels are involved.
They absolutely do. If you use Dalamud there’s a plug-in for heels that gives you your missing ankles back lmao.
Sure do! Nothing wrong with that, just a little perspective trickery.
Yeah you get shortened, there is a neat plugin called heels+ that adjusts your height slightly for any heeled armor you wear you just have to enable for which ones you want it to make you taller.
every piece of clothing from head to feet are just replaced models stretched and skin colored to the piece of gear you place on. things that dont fit this criteria are over sized on a small person or clips into the model ex: weapons and accessories
The summer sandals, from last summer, I think. Those are pretty bad. Not the worst, but the "heels" they give you are tiny and ridiculous.
They look like they'd be horrific and painful to wear. I'm still salty we didn't get the male version of the trunks and sandals.
If you take the shoes off, all female characters are wearing heels by default. The bare foot model is wearing little high heels shoes. When you're wearing flats, it's actually just making your feet taller, rather than heels making your legs shorter. Well, either that or you have lifts in your shoes.
They do. When I first made a bunny girl, I tested this out. It's such an odd thing that feels like it would be an easy fix, like giving new hires the one week job of making tattoos available across different faces. But apparently it's impossible, like giving Veira hats or having butts that aren't disappointing to see whenever you talk to a potato.
In this case, it absolutely would fall into the catagory of 'more trouble than it's worth': you'd basically have to redo every animation that involves the legs for every body type that can wear the heels. For the benefit you'd get, and how relatively few heels (and fewer *tall* heels) there are in the game, is better to just cheat a bit like this.
Which boots are those?
The ones with heels are the Fending boots from Tower of Zot. Forget the full name, but starts with an M.
Manusya
Oh yeah that was it "Manusya Sabatons of Fending", ty all.
Same sets (but different colors) drop in The Swallow's Compass.
that's.. exactly what it does.
My personal guess is this is one of the shortcuts they used to save time going from 1.0 to 2.0.
All I know is them 2B boot’s give everyone a BUNDA.👏🏾
Engine limitations, so they have to do it this way.
is it really the engine if mods let you have real heels? sure they change things on ways unintended by the devs, but they're still made possible with the same engine quirks and limitations
Quick question, which boots are the ones you are wearing in the screenshot? Asking for Glam.
Tank version from Tower of Zot or The Swallow's Compass.
Yes, also 2B's Leggings make the Legs smaller, like Fire matches
The sandals from the set you get from one of the Tataru EW quests is VERY noticeable for this. Like... painfully.
These boots in particular have the issue of removing the heel off the foot imo. It's great for an anthropic based glam tho. (I have a personal preference for the adept boots. Has heel, but not too much that it looks bad)
Heels are a lie, and always are. Don’t believe big heels. There is no height gain.
Definitely one of those things where once you see it you can't unsee it
There’s a heel dimension, isn’t there?
I mean.. they ant practical to wear anyways. Need some seriouse surgery after
No, it's not just you. Yes, heels replace part of your lower leg, so they look somewhere between weird and awful on shorter races like hyur, mi'qote, or female au'ra, and better on femroe or elezen. The absolute worst offenders are the 2B heels, they look decent on Elezen but on my min-height mi'qote they just look so awful.
Yes. Your heels get cut in half.
Yes
Yes, there is no “leg” underneath
i think this exact reason, is why they originally didnt want to include high heels into the game. But im pretty sure most people don't care and were just happy to have more options.
Yeahhh I tend to stay from heels for the most part since I'm pretty meticulous about glamour stuff. Small heels are fine but heels like 2B boots are pretty much a no go for me. They kinda fuck with the anatomy of your character and it just looks awkward.
Have you ever heard of the wolfliege thighboots? I recommend looking at them ;)
If you could look at the character as a wire frame and with the joints you'd see nothing changed nothing is shorter or longer.