On the Tyranny of Burst Windows

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Originally Posted by Lihtleita

if you dont want to do your burst window just dont, its always your choice to play badly. :^)
not like you can even see your damage, right, tos abiding op?

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That's the whole issue tbh, no one want to penalize other by ignoring core gameplay even without parsing tool you know that missing the burst window is detrimental to everyone not just you.

Frankly i only do low level stuff, never touched savage when it's relevant only extreme trial, i'm what you can call a filthy casual and actually i don't mind burst window at all since i don't even need to do them perfectly to beat the content i'm playing :D

That being said i'm always in for a more flexible gameplay.

For me it's not even raid buffs as a concept that I don't like. Being able to line up your biggest attacks with raid buffs to make them even stronger feels great. I just have more of a problem with how XIV implements them, namely that the game lines up all the raid buffs for you and a lot of your strong attacks just automatically fall under them as long as you keep everything on CD. It cuts out half the fun when you're not doing any of the work yourself. I guess it's part of a more general criticism of how jobs are being designed around a strict 2 minute timeline but some more variability and flexibility would be nice. Jobs like DRK and NIN suffer especially because near all of their abilities are 1 or 2 minute CDs, leaving them just doing 1-2-3 between bursts.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

My counterpoint to this is that FFXIV is increasingly moving toward movement-based combat. The majority of "synchronization" in the game--and indeed most of the fun, reactionary gameplay that keeps players interested--is moving around to deal with mechanics and avoid damage. The trials themselves, independent of job design, offer a lot of innovative measures of teamwork--the removal of aligning buff windows wouldn't really detract much from the game.

EDIT: Removed observation about parses, thanks to C'erise and a little more thought I concur that it wouldn't actually affect parse log transparency much. Maybe simplify it.

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I think it's a mistake trying to seperate combat mechanics and job mechanics from each other. They always happen together. A good player isnt just someone who can do a mechanic correctly or who can do their rotation perfectly on a target dummy, a good player is someone who can resolve mechanics while also executing their rotation well. Both takes attention and dumbing down/simplifying one (whatever you want to call it) also affects the other. Advanced relativity is so much easier to execute because you dont have to think about your rotation since the boss is untargetable.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I think it's a mistake trying to seperate combat mechanics and job mechanics from each other. They always happen together. A good player isnt just someone who can do a mechanic correctly or who can do their rotation perfectly on a target dummy, a good player is someone who can resolve mechanics while also executing their rotation well. Both takes attention and dumbing down/simplifying one (whatever you want to call it) also affects the other. Advanced relativity is so much easier to execute because you dont have to think about your rotation since the boss is untargetable.

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That is also why FFXIV is just a memory game, memorize your rotation and memorize the boss patterns and then your done, there is nothing more to improve or do.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I think it's a mistake trying to seperate combat mechanics and job mechanics from each other. They always happen together. A good player isnt just someone who can do a mechanic correctly or who can do their rotation perfectly on a target dummy, a good player is someone who can resolve mechanics while also executing their rotation well. Both takes attention and dumbing down/simplifying one (whatever you want to call it) also affects the other. Advanced relativity is so much easier to execute because you dont have to think about your rotation since the boss is untargetable.

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I agree to an extent, and I believe I said at the end of the OP that removing burst windows would also substantially free up encounter design as well.

And maybe I am unfair in limited the criticism solely to job design, when it kind of plagues the entirety of FFXIV's combat content. There just isn't much opportunity for reactionary gameplay when the bosses are all scripted to the second and the jobs are slowly having anything not in service of buff windows chipped away. Not only are players generally not rewarded for being able to think on their toes, they are actively being deprived of opportunities and options to do so. Once a piece of content has been "learned", engagement/expression drops off dramatically because gameplay has reached a binary state. Either the party has learned the piece of music and its barely even a challenge; or you repeatedly wipe because there are too many noobs in the party. In either case, bored or helpless, all DPS and Tanks are locked into a static, inflexible 2 minute rotation that actively decentivizes you from playing around and just enjoying your moveset--or trying to experiment and find *any* other rotation that wouldn't conform to the 2 minute tyrant.

And what this comes down to is that the choice between jobs is meaning less and less because they all have roughly the same rhythm and timing to their rotations. The thrill of changing to a different job is so heavily dulled by knowing that you're still locked into repeating the same or similar combos only to build up to a same or similar burst window. When people complain about homogenization, the burst window is a huge factor that is undermining even the entire point of having a job system.

And in response to some of the people trying to defend party damage buffs as somehow contributing more complexity or uniqueness to jobs--these are only a *single* ability per DPS that are strangling the *entirety* of job and encounter design. If you need your one ability holding the entire game hostage to still feel like your job is unique, I'm sorry but I do not agree with you and think there are many other ways your job could be better designed without it.

Maybe I'm hitting on something deeper. The problem with player obsession with DPS in MMOs and FFXIV as the culmination of years of DPS optimization ruining fun job design. But either way, given FFXIV's overt casual aspirations and the many, many players complaining of job changes, I just find the 2 minute burst window at odds with so much of the game and its majority audience as a whole.

EDIT: I do have to be clear that I am not in support of merely removing damage buff windows. That alone would be a pretty objective reduction of job design. Jobs have been so heavily modified over the years that they would need to be re-built out once they were freed from the 2 minute limitation. PvP has introduced a lot of interesting ideas for how jobs could have their own internal synergies.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

I agree to an extent, and I believe I said at the end of the OP that removing burst windows would also substantially free up encounter design as well.

And maybe I am unfair in limited the criticism solely to job design, when it kind of plagues the entirety of FFXIV's combat content. There just isn't much opportunity for reactionary gameplay when the bosses are all scripted to the second and the jobs are slowly having anything not in service of buff windows chipped away. Not only are players generally not rewarded for being able to think on their toes, they are actively being deprived of opportunities and options to do so. Once a piece of content has been "learned", engagement/expression drops off dramatically because gameplay has reached a binary state. Either the party has learned the piece of music and its barely even a challenge; or you repeatedly wipe because there are too many noobs in the party. In either case, bored or helpless, you are locked into a boring, static 2 minute rotation that actively decentivizes you from playing around and just enjoying your moveset.

Maybe I'm hitting on something deeper. The problem with player obsession with DPS in MMOs and FFXIV as the culmination of years of DPS optimization ruining fun job design.

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I'm just here to say I agree with everything you wrote. People need to realize Meta and the lack of choice is a player created problem, not from design. I read that other thread about Talent trees and it basically comes down to the same thing. People don't support it because they think the meta will always be in effect. Anyone who makes the illusion of choice argument may as well argue for 1 dps, 1 healer, and 1 tank in this game. That's certainly what it is beginning to feel like anyways. As much flak Lost Ark gets, they have a very well designed talent system, keeping different builds unique enough from each other while balancing the risk vs reward. Not to say that it's perfect there either, their engraving system is suffering and needs a major overhaul after they made a majority of them useless after a revamp. That's just one example.

Encounter design has suffered a lot due to what I feel is an irrational fear. There were things that were not well received, so instead of improving the systems, they straight up removed it. That has always been the solution. It didn't start off perfect? Remove it. Encounters and Jobs have always had an effect on each other, you're not wrong there.

And here I'm looking at 6.1 SAM having gotten the double-slap of having lost both Kaiten and its 1-minute Trick Attack alignments, making it that much more dull...

Honestly, skills like Arcane Circle, Battle Voice, and Battle Litany (the last mostly just because only one job by now benefits from crits in any gameplay-noticeable way) I could do with or without, especially because of their all having the same timers and thus, past the first, not altering gameplay so much as merely punishing deaths and downtime in a weirdly further and variable way, but I like there being some raid buff alignment to care about. They're what offer our macrorotational events, after all.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

For me it's not even raid buffs as a concept that I don't like. Being able to line up your biggest attacks with raid buffs to make them even stronger feels great. I just have more of a problem with how XIV implements them, namely that the game lines up all the raid buffs for you and a lot of your strong attacks just automatically fall under them as long as you keep everything on CD. It cuts out half the fun when you're not doing any of the work yourself. I guess it's part of a more general criticism of how jobs are being designed around a strict 2 minute timeline but some more variability and flexibility would be nice. Jobs like DRK and NIN suffer especially because near all of their abilities are 1 or 2 minute CDs, leaving them just doing 1-2-3 between bursts.

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This is where I'm at. I don't think there's anything wrong with raid buffs as a concept, it's just that FFXIV doesn't get creative with them. How many buffs are outside the two minute window now? Zero since the last patch just killed Trick Attack. To break it down:

• SCH - Chain Stratagem - 120s
• AST - Divination - 120s
• MNK - Brotherhood - 120s
• DRG - Battle Litany - 120s
• NIN - Mug - 120s
• RPR - Arcane Circle - 120s
• BRD - Battle Voice - 120s
• BRD - Radiant Finale - 110s (held for 10s anyways to sync up)
• DNC - Technical Finish - 120s
• SMN - Searing Light - 120s
• RDM - Embolden - 120s

That's it, that's all the party wide raid buffs. There's some partner stuff like Dragon Sight and Devilment, but those are also 120s. Every Job gets crammed into the 120s burst window, and Patch 6.1 changing Trick Attack killed the 60s window that a lot of Jobs liked to play with, such as DRK or RPR. It sucks losing another buff window since going into 6.0 already killed the 90s burst Jobs like DRK and MNK used to have. It makes the game feel more stale to me, and I wish there was more variety.

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Originally Posted by Beddict

This is where I'm at. I don't think there's anything wrong with raid buffs as a concept, it's just that FFXIV doesn't get creative with them. How many buffs are outside the two minute window now? Zero since the last patch just killed Trick Attack. To break it down:

• SCH - Chain Stratagem - 120s
• AST - Divination - 120s
• MNK - Brotherhood - 120s
• DRG - Battle Litany - 120s
• NIN - Mug - 120s
• RPR - Arcane Circle - 120s
• BRD - Battle Voice - 120s
• BRD - Radiant Finale - 110s (held for 10s anyways to sync up)
• DNC - Technical Finish - 120s
• SMN - Searing Light - 120s
• RDM - Embolden - 120s

That's it, that's all the party wide raid buffs. There's some partner stuff like Dragon Sight and Devilment, but those are also 120s. Every Job gets crammed into the 120s burst window, and Patch 6.1 changing Trick Attack killed the 60s window that a lot of Jobs liked to play with, such as DRK or RPR. It sucks losing another buff window since going into 6.0 already killed the 90s burst Jobs like DRK and MNK used to have. It makes the game feel more stale to me, and I wish there was more variety.

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I suppose this could also be another direction to take things. Have so many damage buffs that anytime could feasibly be burst window time. Anything to break up the monotony and encourage variations on rotations and maybe even spontenaity. Let noobs feel like they are contributing to party damage and winning-more all the time.

I wouldn't mind either direction, I just am irked at how everything in this game is becoming a mathematical metronome game, and all in service of a single universal buff window.

If you want to have a good parse number, you pray your team never have a white mage, warrior, and machinist. I guess this implies a lot of things.