One of my biggest gripes that makes the game infuriating.

Is it just me or does everyone feel like the actual ANIMATION of the attack is what should do the damage and not if you were standing in the red circle when it disappeared?

It is so infuriating that I can CLEARLY be out of a boss attack even by 2 seconds but still be hit by it because my foot was slightly in it a second before the red circle or triangle etc vanished. Even if you have a stellar connection and have no other lag, the reaction time it takes to dodge some of these attacks is super human in nature. You actually have to start moving a second before he even starts casting his attack.

The animation should do the damage. Not the goddamn red circle. It is utterly stupid that I can run out and as soon as the red circle is gone I can run back in and still actually get hit by the big attack but it does no damage. It just looks stupid as hell.

I just go by the actual castbar and not the animation or red circle/animation of the ability. Once I started doing that, haven't had a single issue. I agree it should go by the animation because it would make life simple, but go by the castbar; if any part of your character is in the animation by the time the cast finishes, you could be 100 yards away and still take damage. But if you move out before the cast finishes, you can actually move back and get hit by the animation and take zero damage.

So by that logic an enemy should be able to run away and dodge a magic attack even after casting is done?

Yeah it sucks, but programming an animation to hit you is even harder. No matter what, the same complaint will arise that "I was totally out of that!"

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Originally Posted by Senzura

So by that logic an enemy should be able to run away and dodge a magic attack even after casting is done?

Yeah it sucks, but programming an animation to hit you is even harder. No matter what, the same complaint will arise that "I was totally out of that!"

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I beg to differ. Many games have made it so the animation is what does the damage. WoW and GW2 being excellent examples.

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Originally Posted by AidenGrish

I beg to differ. Many games have made it so the animation is what does the damage. WoW and GW2 being excellent examples.

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It has nothing to do with the animation "doing the damage" and everything with the latency between client and server. There is no online game that I know of in existence that utilizes server-side animation rendering. It is inefficient and ridiculous to employ vs. client-side animation rendering.

If you had no latency between your client and the server, you wouldn't be seeing this issue. The reason you do not see it in WoW or GW2 is because the difference in latency / netcode between them and FFXIV. Until latency is addressed, this is how it will be. There is absolutely no freaking way that SE is going to redesign animations to be served to clients. Doing so would only increase latency and reduce server performance dramatically.

To clarify:
Servers cannot send animations to clients. It would simply require too many resources to handle, so animations must be handled by the client.

If the completion (or timed point) of an animation dictated when damage was done, the local files on your computer which control animations could be manipulated to prevent damage from being done.

This is why animations don't dictate when damage is delt. Latency is why you see a delay between animation and damage.

I agree 100% with you OP, I absolutely hate the way they dealt with AoE indicators in this game. EVERY other game has done it the other way, and it just WORKS. You can't just use the standard "This isn't WoW it is it's own game!!1!!", because there is nothing wrong with using a commonly used mechanic that makes logical sense. If they have to shorten the cast time to make up for this I don't care, but being uncertain if you've dodged an attack only to find out three seconds after you've moved out of the AoE is infuriating. "What do you mean I got hit by that?! The attack landed and I was across the room!!"

I think it's a techincal issue and possibly not one they are going to solve easily. Yes they could bring forward the animation so it actually appears to hit your chacracter, but then there would be a delay before you actually took any damage and for some things (Landslide is probably a good example) it would look ridiculous.

If anyone has any insight into how some other MMOs hide or get around this problem it would be interesting to know. All MMOs have latency, but it just seems to look more obvious in this game's case.

They could just make it so the animation begins client-side once the player sees the red circle (i.e. tie the animation to the circle for clients, once red circle is rendered, begin animation.), so the red circle is still exactly the same and can't be altered, but the animations now "fit."