Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I'd love it if a JRPG where you have fixed characters (who don't change outfit with jobs ala FFV or FFX-2) had them change outfits based on the environment you are currently in. I mean, would it really be that much more resource intensive? Figure ~8 characters with ~5 outfits each (temperate, heavy rain, snowy, desert, tropical). Tell the art team to use adding and removing layers as much as possible to simplify things and maintain more visual cohesiveness across each character's outfits.
Any time you think "Would this really be hard/time consuming to do in game development" the answer is yes.
In your example, they're going from creating, rendering, and testing 8 unique (probably hi-res, probably with clothes and hair physics) character models to 40. You also can't just, put a sweater on a pre-existing model either.
I'd love it if a JRPG where you have fixed characters (who don't change outfit with jobs ala FFV or FFX-2) had them change outfits based on the environment you are currently in. I mean, would it really be that much more resource intensive? Figure ~8 characters with ~5 outfits each (temperate, heavy rain, snowy, desert, tropical). Tell the art team to use adding and removing layers as much as possible to simplify things and maintain more visual cohesiveness across each character's outfits.
Any time you think "Would this really be hard/time consuming to do in game development" the answer is yes.
In your example, they're going from creating, rendering, and testing 8 unique (probably hi-res, probably with clothes and hair physics) character models to 40. You also can't just, put a sweater on a pre-existing model either.
Even doing this with sprites would be a pain in the ass.
I don't think anyone disputes that its difficult or has a cost. It just comes down to is it worth the opportunity cost? Some game devs have said yes, and some fans have rewarded that. I wish I had some figures, but based on my own bias I think character model DLC is the one of the if not the most lucrative DLC out there. So obviously some people put enough stock into it that it affects their purchasing choices.
If you want a game to do something similar then the Tales of series is probably the closest. They tend to give you a bunch of outfits you can pick from and customize
DLC is a very different thing from just putting it in the game, which does not seem to be part of the original post.
True, I'm saying that it shows a pattern. If it's the difference between more dynamic character models (i.e. changes of clothes) and some other graphical cost (say, more enemy models) I think that there's measurable evidence that consumers would prefer the former, and game devs might decide to court that audience more.
I don’t disagree, but you started off with “I don’t think any one disputes that it’s difficult or has a cost”
and I’m over here like “yeah, actually that guy literally just said ‘would it really be that much more resource intensive’ like he thinks that’s a thing you can just pop into a game like ain’t shit”.
I don’t disagree, but you started off with “I don’t think any one disputes that it’s difficult or has a cost”
and I’m over here like “yeah, actually that guy literally just said ‘would it really be that much more resource intensive’ like he thinks that’s a thing you can just pop into a game like ain’t shit”.
Yeah, that's true. I just went back and looked at it. This one's on me.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
If you want a game to do something similar then the Tales of series is probably the closest. They tend to give you a bunch of outfits you can pick from and customize
Yeah, I was coming from the basis of how many games give you customizable outfits nowadays, some where you can mix and match bits resulting in a much larger possibility space than ~40. That's why I figured it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal.
I logged back into FFXIV and immediately had NO clue what I had been doing
There's a little UI element that you can click to see where you were and what is the next step in the Main Story Quest. Most other things branch off from there anyways, so it is always a good place to start.
I mean, you can. Look at City of Heroes and how it handles shirts, coats, 'chest details' like bandoliers or breastplates, shoulder pads, and capes.
That's not how CoX worked. They were very clear that every single piece had to be hand edited to fit the models in the game and it was a very time intensive process. It came up all the time.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
But CoX had hundreds of items that had to be able to stretch and skew to fit player-variable proportions on three different character models with a fuck ton of different animations, and it's not like they weren't constantly putting out lots of other content and adding new features to the game. So clearly, a small set like I'm talking about would not be some terrible albatross around the neck of a AA or AAA game.
Even if you had to do it from scratch for each outfit, how many outfits did Lightning have in FFXIII Lightning Returns? Over 90, and even if we take out the DLC it's still more than 75.
I logged back into FFXIV and immediately had NO clue what I had been doing
There's a little UI element that you can click to see where you were and what is the next step in the Main Story Quest. Most other things branch off from there anyways, so it is always a good place to start.
Yeah, I found that after like 10 minutes. Looks like have to be level 20!
Are you actually comparing an MMO with a monthly subscription, whose design started with “colorful superheroes of many divers shapes and hues” from inception to a game with a flat fee?
The short answer is yes, that shit costs time and resources, and if it isn’t part of the design from an early stage, it is likely going to go on a “wishlist” and not get looked at. The “AAA” segment of the industry has their heads up their asses on a remarkably wide number of issues, but that doesn’t mean that adding art to a game is ever, EVER a trivial thing.
At that level, you want to make sure to keep your class/job quests given by your job/class trainers up to date. (Given every 5 levels).
If you are still looking for XP then try running a daily leveling dungeon (if on PC, the default key is U to bring up the dungeonfinder) or even queuing for a specific dungeon. If you want to do stuff out in the world then completing some sidequests, doing some fates or even leves are all other good ideas.
If it is your first time through then I'd also suggest playing each of the guildhests (queueable via the dungeonfinder) once as they give a big XP bonus and teach you some of the mechanics you will see in the game.
Finally, there's a hunt log (go to the logs mini-menu of circles somewhere in your UI) that it helps to complete for more XP.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Are you actually comparing an MMO with a monthly subscription, whose design started with “colorful superheroes of many divers shapes and hues” from inception to a game with a flat fee?
The short answer is yes, that shit costs time and resources, and if it isn’t part of the design from an early stage, it is likely going to go on a “wishlist” and not get looked at. The “AAA” segment of the industry has their heads up their asses on a remarkably wide number of issues, but that doesn’t mean that adding art to a game is ever, EVER a trivial thing.
Alright, first off, chill out. Secondly, mind addressing the standard AAA game I mentioned that had a one-time flat fee purchase that has almost double the amount of character appearances that I was suggesting?
Even if you had to do it from scratch for each outfit, how many outfits did Lightning have in FFXIII Lightning Returns? Over 90, and even if we take out the DLC it's still more than 75.
Pokemon XY, Mario Oddyssey, Splatoon, Bloodborne, the Halo series from 3 onwards, Call of Duty after MW2, I could go on. They all had large pools of outfits characters could choose from. It's totally doable, and I think it would be a cool bit of attention to detail. I don't know why you're so angry with me for saying that?
Are you actually comparing an MMO with a monthly subscription, whose design started with “colorful superheroes of many divers shapes and hues” from inception to a game with a flat fee?
The short answer is yes, that shit costs time and resources, and if it isn’t part of the design from an early stage, it is likely going to go on a “wishlist” and not get looked at. The “AAA” segment of the industry has their heads up their asses on a remarkably wide number of issues, but that doesn’t mean that adding art to a game is ever, EVER a trivial thing.
Alright, first off, chill out. Secondly, mind addressing the standard AAA game I mentioned that had a one-time flat fee purchase that has almost double the amount of character appearances that I was suggesting?
Even if you had to do it from scratch for each outfit, how many outfits did Lightning have in FFXIII Lightning Returns? Over 90, and even if we take out the DLC it's still more than 75.
Pokemon XY, Mario Oddyssey, Bloodborne, I could go on. It's totally doable, and I think it would be a cool bit of attention to detail. I don't know why you're so angry with me for saying that?
In part because your goalposts are moving around, and in part because you’re admitting ignorance and then hand waving when people are telling you the answers, in my case from experience working in the industry.
If your hypothetical is “I would like this and I wish someone would do it”, that is perfectly reasonable. As you have noticed, some games do it!
If your hypothetical is “why doesn’t everybody do this, I imagine it’s pretty easy” then you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
It really hasn't shifted. I said I would like it, and that I think it's not a big deal for a big-budget game. Then I gave examples of a bunch of big-budget games that have done that much or more?
The only thing that changed was that I suggested one way that might make it easier, and people shot that down so I conceded that point.
Edit: I mean, to the point of the person saying it'd be difficult even with sprites, how many job class system Final Fantasy games have party-member sprites numbering in the 30's or higher? FFV has 5 different characters each with individualized sprites for 20 or more classes (so, over a 100) in 1992.
It really hasn't shifted. I said I would like it, and that I think it's not a big deal for a big-budget game. Then I gave examples of a bunch of big-budget games that have done that much or more?
The only thing that changed was that I suggested one way that might make it easier, and people shot that down so I conceded that point.
For starters nothing in “big budget games” is easy, in part because, like most corporate behemoths, everything gets decided by committee.
Second of all, it is highly unlikely that any of the games you cited added the myriad of costumes that were in the final game in the midst of development: that feature of the game was very likely included in pre-production and prioritized as a feature of the game all the way through ship. There are as many reasons why a game might not include that as part of its feature list as the day is long, and even if it was included, there’s many opportunities for such a feature to get cut for time or money concerns.
Edit: worth mentioning that I’m generalizing, which in itself is not a great thing to do, because games are developed in many different ways even within the same studio! Each art pipeline for each game looks different! How much or how little art each game needs is wildly different, even for games within the same genre! Making games is hard, and art is one of the most complex, expensive, and time-consuming parts of development.
sarukun on
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
It really hasn't shifted. I said I would like it, and that I think it's not a big deal for a big-budget game. Then I gave examples of a bunch of big-budget games that have done that much or more?
The only thing that changed was that I suggested one way that might make it easier, and people shot that down so I conceded that point.
For starters nothing in “big budget games” is easy, in part because, like most corporate behemoths, everything gets decided by committee.
Second of all, it is highly unlikely that any of the games you cited added the myriad of costumes that were in the final game in the midst of development: that feature of the game was very likely included in pre-production and prioritized as a feature of the game all the way through ship. There are as many reasons why a game might not include that as part of its feature list as the day is long, and even if it was included, there’s many opportunities for such a feature to get cut for time or money concerns.
Alright now you're just being silly. Obviously I was talking in relative terms to the overall scope of the project. I didn't say an indie dev could do it so AAA must, I said AA-AAA games have so AA-AAA projects could. And where on earth did you get the notion that I was saying it's something that should be done slap-dash late in development? Of course it's a feature that would need to be planned for early enough to give the art and graphics teams times to make the models.
You accuse me of shifting goal posts, but it seems like you're stretching further and further to try and make what I'm saying sound unreasonable.
It really hasn't shifted. I said I would like it, and that I think it's not a big deal for a big-budget game. Then I gave examples of a bunch of big-budget games that have done that much or more?
The only thing that changed was that I suggested one way that might make it easier, and people shot that down so I conceded that point.
For starters nothing in “big budget games” is easy, in part because, like most corporate behemoths, everything gets decided by committee.
Second of all, it is highly unlikely that any of the games you cited added the myriad of costumes that were in the final game in the midst of development: that feature of the game was very likely included in pre-production and prioritized as a feature of the game all the way through ship. There are as many reasons why a game might not include that as part of its feature list as the day is long, and even if it was included, there’s many opportunities for such a feature to get cut for time or money concerns.
Alright now you're just being silly. Obviously I was talking in relative terms to the overall scope of the project. I didn't say an indie dev could do it so AAA must, I said AA-AAA games have so AA-AAA could. And where on earth did you get the notion that I was saying it's something that should be done slap-dash late in development? Of course it's a feature that would need to be planned for early enough to give the art and graphics teams times to make the models.
You accuse me of shifting goal posts, but it seems like you're stretching further and further to try and make what I'm saying sound unreasonable.
I am giving you the reasons why this feature that you want standard on games put out by studios of a certain size with a certain amount of money to spend might not make the decision to design every game they make the same way, or why they might want to and then cut such a feature in the midst of production. You are free to think whatever you like about studios that don’t design their games the way you specifically would like them to, but having watched features get cut from games and having watched art departments strain to bursting to get assets on a disk in time for ship, I am telling you that
A) studios may not design a game that way from the ground up for any one of a multitude of reasons, up to and including “we like having the character wear the same outfit all the time because we think he looks badass” studios may initially plan for all kinds of art assets that get cut at any stage of production due to budgetary or time constraints, or a change in design direction
C) they may decide they want such a feature but planning for it may not have been included at an earlier stage of development and reworking the pipelines may not be possible.
Am I wrong in thinking that your question is “Why aren’t weather/biome-appropriate outfits standard on world-spanning JRPGs at the Triple A level?” Because these look like pretty reasonable answers to that question to me.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
And I feel like you are arguing against some imagined strawman, and not against what I actually said.
I didn't say that is should be standard. But come on now, even if I had your tone is not addressing that question. I didn't say they suck if they don't do it, I didn't say that features never get cut unless there's something malign going on at the studio (Christ, I'm not one of those entitled kickstarter backers).
I said it's a feature that I would like to see a Japanese-style roleplaying game use, for the purpose of verisimilitude, and later backed it up with examples of similarly big one-time purchase games that have had as many (and in some cases more) alternate or customizable character models to show it's not an unreasonable ask. That's all.
Those points stand to explain why many games that might have included such a feature do not have it.
To get more specific, no, that such a feature should be included, hypothetically, on A game at some point in time is not, as you put it, “an unreasonable ask”. However, I am also moved to remark that such a feature would not rank very high on any feature lists, and as such would very likely be among the first to be cut in the event that cuts were to happen.
The ease of changing character appearances is mostly an engine issue. Some engines are built for it, others aren't. For those that aren't it's still possible, but requires a lot of extra work.
If a game is built with the goal from the ground up, the biggest investment comes from the art direction, not implementation.
It is highly unlikely a team would develop an engine solution to appearance changes without a compelling gameplay reason to do so. Such games certainly could exist! But that means the “easier” solution is just building a different character model and swapping it wherever/whenever needed.
Which means we’re back to the issue of “how important is this, because we’ve already got a shitload of art to put on this disk” as an extremely common limiting factor.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
Yes, I am talking about just having the game load different fixed characters models for different locations. Not an engine for variable appearances. I had the apparently foolish notion that it might be easier for the art team to make the different models by starting with one base outfit and adding different stuff over it, but I was never asking for the models to be customizable by the player which is obviously much more complicated. That there are games that do that (even one time purchase games) seemed like a reason to believe that it wouldn't be a herculean task to implement my much simpler idea that just involved some alternative art assets and location based pointers for which of those assets to load. I also gave an example of a AAA budget JRPG that had almost double the number of art assets for alternate character models as a reason I didn't think the extra assets would be prohibitive in and of themselves.
God forbid I ever say "I'd like to see" again. And how dare I build expectations based on what one particular company has already done multiple times. FF5, FFX-2, FF3DS, Square-Enix couldn't possibly have more than one model per party member. It's insane!
Hey, you asked a question, and got an answer. I’m sorry you didn’t like it. Note that I did not say “this is impossible”. I gave you real answers explaining why it might be difficult or unlikely, in response to an actual question you asked, based on my personal experience. Not sure what else you might have wanted in response to that question outside of “gee why didn’t anyone else think of that before!”, but I am sorry that the time and effort I put into responding wasn’t it.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I don't think you realize how condescending you were throughout your responses (note I didn't bitch about turtleant or Narbus' responses), and you kept arguing against things I didn't say, while not even addressing the points I did raise, so I don't think I'm being unreasonable in getting frustrated. Let's look back at how you responded when you finally acknowledged the discrepancies between what you'd been attacking and what I had actually said:
Those points stand to explain why many games that might have included such a feature do not have it.
To get more specific, no, that such a feature should be included, hypothetically, on A game at some point in time is not, as you put it, “an unreasonable ask”. However, I am also moved to remark that such a feature would not rank very high on any feature lists, and as such would very likely be among the first to be cut in the event that cuts were to happen.
You tell me, does that seem contrite, or dismissive? Even so, I was going to leave it at that, but then you had to keep going, arguing yet more things that I hadn't said.
I will happily cop to getting a bit salty when turtleant pointed out that things you were saying were off base and you decided, for whatever reason that his points were simply untrue. I will also concede that I may have extrapolated your point to be more general than you intended!
However, all of the points I provided were relevant and aimed at addressing the question you asked. I also do not feel that my tone was any more dismissive than yours was. Please be aware that your behavior in this thread elicited many of the same feelings of frustration that you are yourself now dealing with. You may not agree or have intended it, but from my perspective, I was dealing kind for kind. Perhaps that was where I could have made a better choice, but since “dismissive tone” appears to be a sticking point for you, I hope that you will recognize that
“Yeah, I was coming from the basis of how many games give you customizable outfits nowadays, some where you can mix and match bits resulting in a much larger possibility space than ~40. That's why I figured it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal.”
and
“I mean, you can. Look at City of Heroes and how it handles shirts, coats, 'chest details' like bandoliers or breastplates, shoulder pads, and capes.”
might be interpreted as sounding “dismissive”.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
I really don't think that offering counterexamples is in the same league as saying "you don't know what the fuck you're talking about", but I apologize to anyone I offended.
My cousin just got engaged and I’d like to get the couple a small present. They both play FFXIV and have a strong appreciation for the series in general. I’m thinking something like a charm or other accessory that they could both wear matching sets of. Any suggestions for physical products?
Posts
Only in the states.
Over seas he’s Mega Drive.
Any time you think "Would this really be hard/time consuming to do in game development" the answer is yes.
In your example, they're going from creating, rendering, and testing 8 unique (probably hi-res, probably with clothes and hair physics) character models to 40. You also can't just, put a sweater on a pre-existing model either.
Even doing this with sprites would be a pain in the ass.
True, I'm saying that it shows a pattern. If it's the difference between more dynamic character models (i.e. changes of clothes) and some other graphical cost (say, more enemy models) I think that there's measurable evidence that consumers would prefer the former, and game devs might decide to court that audience more.
and I’m over here like “yeah, actually that guy literally just said ‘would it really be that much more resource intensive’ like he thinks that’s a thing you can just pop into a game like ain’t shit”.
Finally, a boss that isn’t a huge asshole.
Yeah, that's true. I just went back and looked at it. This one's on me.
depends who you're stealing from
Every time I logged in I felt that way.
Yeah, I was coming from the basis of how many games give you customizable outfits nowadays, some where you can mix and match bits resulting in a much larger possibility space than ~40. That's why I figured it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal.
I mean, you can. Look at City of Heroes and how it handles shirts, coats, 'chest details' like bandoliers or breastplates, shoulder pads, and capes.
There's a little UI element that you can click to see where you were and what is the next step in the Main Story Quest. Most other things branch off from there anyways, so it is always a good place to start.
That's not how CoX worked. They were very clear that every single piece had to be hand edited to fit the models in the game and it was a very time intensive process. It came up all the time.
Even if you had to do it from scratch for each outfit, how many outfits did Lightning have in FFXIII Lightning Returns? Over 90, and even if we take out the DLC it's still more than 75.
Yeah, I found that after like 10 minutes. Looks like have to be level 20!
The short answer is yes, that shit costs time and resources, and if it isn’t part of the design from an early stage, it is likely going to go on a “wishlist” and not get looked at. The “AAA” segment of the industry has their heads up their asses on a remarkably wide number of issues, but that doesn’t mean that adding art to a game is ever, EVER a trivial thing.
If you are still looking for XP then try running a daily leveling dungeon (if on PC, the default key is U to bring up the dungeonfinder) or even queuing for a specific dungeon. If you want to do stuff out in the world then completing some sidequests, doing some fates or even leves are all other good ideas.
If it is your first time through then I'd also suggest playing each of the guildhests (queueable via the dungeonfinder) once as they give a big XP bonus and teach you some of the mechanics you will see in the game.
Finally, there's a hunt log (go to the logs mini-menu of circles somewhere in your UI) that it helps to complete for more XP.
Alright, first off, chill out. Secondly, mind addressing the standard AAA game I mentioned that had a one-time flat fee purchase that has almost double the amount of character appearances that I was suggesting?
Pokemon XY, Mario Oddyssey, Splatoon, Bloodborne, the Halo series from 3 onwards, Call of Duty after MW2, I could go on. They all had large pools of outfits characters could choose from. It's totally doable, and I think it would be a cool bit of attention to detail. I don't know why you're so angry with me for saying that?
In part because your goalposts are moving around, and in part because you’re admitting ignorance and then hand waving when people are telling you the answers, in my case from experience working in the industry.
If your hypothetical is “I would like this and I wish someone would do it”, that is perfectly reasonable. As you have noticed, some games do it!
If your hypothetical is “why doesn’t everybody do this, I imagine it’s pretty easy” then you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
The only thing that changed was that I suggested one way that might make it easier, and people shot that down so I conceded that point.
Edit: I mean, to the point of the person saying it'd be difficult even with sprites, how many job class system Final Fantasy games have party-member sprites numbering in the 30's or higher? FFV has 5 different characters each with individualized sprites for 20 or more classes (so, over a 100) in 1992.
For starters nothing in “big budget games” is easy, in part because, like most corporate behemoths, everything gets decided by committee.
Second of all, it is highly unlikely that any of the games you cited added the myriad of costumes that were in the final game in the midst of development: that feature of the game was very likely included in pre-production and prioritized as a feature of the game all the way through ship. There are as many reasons why a game might not include that as part of its feature list as the day is long, and even if it was included, there’s many opportunities for such a feature to get cut for time or money concerns.
Edit: worth mentioning that I’m generalizing, which in itself is not a great thing to do, because games are developed in many different ways even within the same studio! Each art pipeline for each game looks different! How much or how little art each game needs is wildly different, even for games within the same genre! Making games is hard, and art is one of the most complex, expensive, and time-consuming parts of development.
Alright now you're just being silly. Obviously I was talking in relative terms to the overall scope of the project. I didn't say an indie dev could do it so AAA must, I said AA-AAA games have so AA-AAA projects could. And where on earth did you get the notion that I was saying it's something that should be done slap-dash late in development? Of course it's a feature that would need to be planned for early enough to give the art and graphics teams times to make the models.
You accuse me of shifting goal posts, but it seems like you're stretching further and further to try and make what I'm saying sound unreasonable.
I am giving you the reasons why this feature that you want standard on games put out by studios of a certain size with a certain amount of money to spend might not make the decision to design every game they make the same way, or why they might want to and then cut such a feature in the midst of production. You are free to think whatever you like about studios that don’t design their games the way you specifically would like them to, but having watched features get cut from games and having watched art departments strain to bursting to get assets on a disk in time for ship, I am telling you that
A) studios may not design a game that way from the ground up for any one of a multitude of reasons, up to and including “we like having the character wear the same outfit all the time because we think he looks badass”
C) they may decide they want such a feature but planning for it may not have been included at an earlier stage of development and reworking the pipelines may not be possible.
Am I wrong in thinking that your question is “Why aren’t weather/biome-appropriate outfits standard on world-spanning JRPGs at the Triple A level?” Because these look like pretty reasonable answers to that question to me.
I didn't say that is should be standard. But come on now, even if I had your tone is not addressing that question. I didn't say they suck if they don't do it, I didn't say that features never get cut unless there's something malign going on at the studio (Christ, I'm not one of those entitled kickstarter backers).
I said it's a feature that I would like to see a Japanese-style roleplaying game use, for the purpose of verisimilitude, and later backed it up with examples of similarly big one-time purchase games that have had as many (and in some cases more) alternate or customizable character models to show it's not an unreasonable ask. That's all.
To get more specific, no, that such a feature should be included, hypothetically, on A game at some point in time is not, as you put it, “an unreasonable ask”. However, I am also moved to remark that such a feature would not rank very high on any feature lists, and as such would very likely be among the first to be cut in the event that cuts were to happen.
If a game is built with the goal from the ground up, the biggest investment comes from the art direction, not implementation.
Which means we’re back to the issue of “how important is this, because we’ve already got a shitload of art to put on this disk” as an extremely common limiting factor.
Yes, I am talking about just having the game load different fixed characters models for different locations. Not an engine for variable appearances. I had the apparently foolish notion that it might be easier for the art team to make the different models by starting with one base outfit and adding different stuff over it, but I was never asking for the models to be customizable by the player which is obviously much more complicated. That there are games that do that (even one time purchase games) seemed like a reason to believe that it wouldn't be a herculean task to implement my much simpler idea that just involved some alternative art assets and location based pointers for which of those assets to load. I also gave an example of a AAA budget JRPG that had almost double the number of art assets for alternate character models as a reason I didn't think the extra assets would be prohibitive in and of themselves.
God forbid I ever say "I'd like to see" again. And how dare I build expectations based on what one particular company has already done multiple times. FF5, FFX-2, FF3DS, Square-Enix couldn't possibly have more than one model per party member. It's insane!
You tell me, does that seem contrite, or dismissive? Even so, I was going to leave it at that, but then you had to keep going, arguing yet more things that I hadn't said.
However, all of the points I provided were relevant and aimed at addressing the question you asked. I also do not feel that my tone was any more dismissive than yours was. Please be aware that your behavior in this thread elicited many of the same feelings of frustration that you are yourself now dealing with. You may not agree or have intended it, but from my perspective, I was dealing kind for kind. Perhaps that was where I could have made a better choice, but since “dismissive tone” appears to be a sticking point for you, I hope that you will recognize that
“Yeah, I was coming from the basis of how many games give you customizable outfits nowadays, some where you can mix and match bits resulting in a much larger possibility space than ~40. That's why I figured it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal.”
and
“I mean, you can. Look at City of Heroes and how it handles shirts, coats, 'chest details' like bandoliers or breastplates, shoulder pads, and capes.”
might be interpreted as sounding “dismissive”.