[Suggestion] boss starting animation earlier

Hi, so as many of you may already know, FF14 isn't the most responding mmorpg around there and this is due to a multiple of factor.

On interesting thing you learn (and unlearn when you try another mmo) is to never take into consideration a boss animation. Basically, if the attack is resolved, you can bath into the fire all day, it doesn't matter.

In general, when boss have a cast attack, if you're in the AoE range when the cast is over, you're screwed even if the animation takes a whooping 1-2s to show the attack.

Hence the suggestion: Would it be possible to start a boss attack animation 0.5s before the cast is resolved?

I'm pretty sure in the current state of the game, this is impossible but could it be done? especially on un-interruptable cast?

A good visual representation can be found there : https://youtu.be/zMbv2JrnekQ?t=269

If the boss would start the attack animation 0.5s before it would align more properly with what's actually going on (damage appears right at the end of the cast and not 0.5s after).
Beside making the game more visually consistent, this would also help a great deal of new players who keep being hit without understanding why.

You know that one sentence we all heard "But i was out!"

This is because player, especially new one, focus on visual clues and not especially UI clues (casting bar).

Thanks for your time

I agree wholeheartedly, it's been really jarring how you get hit even if it visually doesn't look like it which could be easily fixed by just having enemies perform their attack animations earlier.

Would feel a lot less cheap and more immersive.

Don't forget to like, dev actually pay more attention to post with loads of likes.

If you think it's a good idea, thumbs up, with enough tumbs up it might actually be discussed at somepoint.

While I understand your frustration with this, and it's definitely an aspect of the learning curve in FFXIV, I'm not sure it's really worth fixing and wouldn't be nearly as simple as you're suggesting.

For *most* attacks, the server processes the entire attack as soon as the cast bar is finished (or when the aoe marker disappears) including affected targets, damage, status effects, etc. This is no different from processing a player attack which also happens as soon as the cast bar finishes. Not all attacks work this way though. The second boss in Keeper of the Lake, for instance, has an attack that outlives its cast bar and aoe marker. In this case both the end of the cast bar and the end of the animation are relevant for determining when the attack is happening and when it isn't.

Also let me point out that half a second is a REALLY long time. Most humans have a reaction speed around a quarter second. Gamers tend to be a little quicker because we're used to reacting to things we see, but generally a quarter second is going to be about right.

Well half a second was an example. Wathever the right value would be doesnt matter much as long as the damage somewhat lines up with the animation.

It just feels extrememy weird to be able to go through an attack untouched or dying miles away from it.

I'm no fewer quite aware this would be tricky to implement.

Regarding keeper of the lake、 that kind of very rare action is obviously not targeted by this post. (No need to cherry pick one of the 2 attack that work this way)

All I'm saying is、 when the boss cast sonething、 I'd like the result to match like animation like most modern games. And not just receive the damage (often killing the player) before the animation even begins.

Os12 Earthquack is a prime example of animation of overly delayed animation.
You can litteraly sprint half the arena between the beginning of the aoe and the actual Earthquack.

It just feels weird that the right thing to do is to run in the Earthquack as soon as he moves、 similarly、 you're dead if you're not in melee as soon as move、 even tho visually you're safe by the time everything explodes

I do get annoyed when I'm on the other side of the arena from an attack, yet get hit by said attack anyway. It doesn't make sense to take damage from an attack when you visibly were not hit by it to begin with.

Should I be able to throw a punch irl, the person very clearly gets out of the way, yet somehow still gets my fist in their face when I hit the air? Obviously not.

I agree with this topic.

Latency also plays a role here. How long should the server legit give you to account for that?

I understand it does work differently than, say, WoW where the animation for the attack is usually (though not always) the determining factor in whether or not you've been hit by it. But forgive me for saying so, you're level 70, you're doing Omega Savage, you've been through the learning curve here (or you should have by this point anyway). You know there are even going to be attacks too fast for you to dodge if you wait for the AoE marker to come out first, let alone the animation, (Orbonne Monastery has several) so you have to be in position before they happen. You know how this works right now and should be able to execute it. So what are we talking about here? Changing a fundamental aspect of the game's mechanics for... what? What benefit does this confer or what problem does it solve?

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Latency also plays a role here. How long should the server legit give you to account for that?

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If you're after a level playing field, the answer to that is obvious. The amount of your latency. There is probably a threshold where it doesn't matter, probably in the 30-50ms area, so anything above that gets taken into consideration.


another thing they can do to level things is to give ps4 users a wider field of view, or make the bosses smaller so you can at least see what they are doing, far too many have their heads cut off even with the camera pulled right out.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

If you're after a level playing field, the answer to that is obvious. The amount of your latency. There is probably a threshold where it doesn't matter, probably in the 30-50ms area, so anything above that gets taken into consideration.


another thing they can do to level things is to give ps4 users a wider field of view, or make the bosses smaller so you can at least see what they are doing, far too many have their heads cut off even with the camera pulled right out.

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You've got a scenario there where attacks would not only appear to affect different people at different times but would ACTUALLY affect different people at different times. My average latency to FFXIV's servers is around 50ms but there are plenty of people with latency averages in the 200-300ms range. How would that work? I have less time to react to something than they do? How long should the server sit there processing one attack at 150 different latency levels? It also opens up room for abuse there with people artificially increasing their latency to gain an advantage.

The FoV thing on PS4 is interesting. I will say there are several bosses and even some trash mobs that get cut off on PC as well even with the camera in the stratosphere. What I'd actually like here would be for the nameplates to snap to the screen rather than be in fixed position over the mob's head. If the mob's head is over the top of my screen I can't see the nameplate and that can cause issues. I don't necessarily need to see the boss' head, but the nameplate has actual game functionality and that should be available no matter how tall the mob is.

You wouldn't have less time to react, those with higher latency would have more so they are on a par with you. It's only deciding a hit or not, higher latency will still stunt your max dps, because you can never get that time back. It's a single variable decided beforehand so the calculations wouldn't be a big deal. There's always "oh, but exploits", that happens already, they already exist, cheaters will always be out there.



I'm not advocating or expecting such a thing, but it's important to remember this game does not have a level playing field, plenty of players carry a handicap.

It's actually lore approrpiate you see the attack resolution before it happens. You have the Echo afterall.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

You wouldn't have less time to react, those with higher latency would have more so they are on a par with you. It's only deciding a hit or not, higher latency will still stunt your max dps, because you can never get that time back. It's a single variable decided beforehand so the calculations wouldn't be a big deal. There's always "oh, but exploits", that happens already, they already exist, cheaters will always be out there.

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I'm still on the server having to process that. Also how would you handle back-to-back boss actions? I can foresee a situation here where you could potentially have a party member who's a full second or more behind the rest of the raid responding to things.

You're right that there isn't an even playing field. Any online game is going to have latency as a limiting factor on performance and that's unfortunate, but I don't think the solution is to process a single attack several hundred times per second to make up for people who are stuck with potato internet speeds. I don't have a solution for it either, if I did I'd be quite rich indeed, I just know this isn't one.

I do agree,

It's comletely against intuition but it's not just the bosses; every skills seems to work like this:

- Skill Activation (if it' you the moment you press the button)
- Wait for X seconds (cast time, can be 0) while showing a "charging" animation (and the AoE)
- The Skill Procs (THIS is the X moment when damage, positions, buffs, debuffs and such are accounted. In this moment the AoE, if present, will disappear)
- Skill animation (can last a while but it's not accounted, just for show).
- Damage/efffect is applied on target

Side effects are a lot, some benificial, some not.

When a PAL flashes for instances we can see the situation pretty clearly:

- You press FLASH
- Game calculate radius and a little white orb pops over your head
- Game decides which enemies are into said radius
- The little white orb "explodes" into a flash of light (this takes like 0.5 secs)
- Affected enemies are blinded/taunted

Any enemy that WAS NOT in radius when the "little orb" spawned (but was when it explodes - let's say the enemy was walking toward you when you was about to cast) on your head WILL NOT be hit
Any ememy that WAS in the radius at first (but was not later) will be hit anyway

If you perform a long skill on someone you can see this even better (try rage of halone on an enemy then start moving away, on the fifth hit of the animation you can be yards away and the enemy WILL be hit. But the damage will be applied only in the end).

While this makes the game easier/better in some instances it becomes confusing when mobs are doing that too:

First: the AoE disappears after the charge. This is misleading. It should disappear only AFTER the animation has depleted.

At the current state we can see an AoE -> Run out -> It disappears (cast complete) - we go back in - a flaming upset meteor comes on our head but nothing happens.

like this:

13.00.00 AM - Boss Charges a meteor (3s animation+5secs cast) - AoE turns on
13.00.05 AM - Meteor animation starts (the sky opens, it gets dark meteor starts to drop out etc.) - AoE goes off and position is calculated
13.00.06 AM - Meteor animation is up an running, expert players goes back in the AoEd (beneath said meteor)
13.00.07 AM - animation ends, meteor hits. Player inside the AoE at 13.00.05 are hit while player that actually look like been crushed by meteor (they got back in between 00.06 and 00.07) receive no damage

Imagine this:

13.00.00 AM - Boss Charges a meteor (3s animation+2secs cast) - AoE turns on
13.00.02 AM - Meteor animation starts (the sky opens, it gets dark meteor starts to drop out) - AoE still on
13.00.05 AM - Meteor HITS - AoE disappears - position calculated and damage applied

The difference in cast/animation time is there because, at the present, it looks like the animation is "just a cool thing to show" we'd get hit after 5 secs in both cases which is the important thing

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Originally Posted by Callinon

make up for people who are stuck with potato internet speeds

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It's got nothing to do with internet speeds, it's to do with how far you are away from the server. You can't adjust the speed of light, you can only take it into consideration when you code these things. SE clearly didn't.

actually op is kinda right, the animation could align better, cast timers are just a way to say something is coming and at the end of the timer server decides on if you got hit or not via whatever variables are set.

however this does not stop the devs from having animations start earlier, basically bosses build up to the attack via an animation that then follows through at the end of the cast. think along the lines like the claw swipes from certain bosses.. we see the boss is going to do the attack (hidden cast time) aoe marker goes out, server does checks and finishes animation we see results via damage taken or not. this has nothing to do with latency.

however in the case of clearly being out on your screen and still getting hit has nothing to do with the animation. if the game applied the animation and cast to align better then the latency on you receiving the information from the server to say whether you got hit or not is when your character can move away from the animation on your screen but you still receive the damage. without a perfect connection or lan type connections you could always potentially move out of the way on your screen and still take damage.

online games are never going to be the same as locally run games for animation alignment and character placement. they can be very close especially with faster connections but any delay will cause a mis-alignment potentially.

Exactly as OP says. Just have the boss start the animation 80% or so through the cast bar... Have the boss start it's animation before the AoE circle disappears... So the second it does disappear - the bosses attack has hit / exploded. It's so friggin' lame to have an AoE circle disappear while you're in it... You move halfway across the map... and 2 seconds later a meteor drops on that location you were in and then you take damage super far away. Hate it, hate it, hate it... To heck with the people defending this dumb crap. It seems like an easy fix to me. "Boss starts animation 80% through cast bar instead of at the completion of the cast bar". HOW HARD WOULD THAT BE?!

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Originally Posted by Zuklar

HOW HARD WOULD THAT BE?!

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As someone who plays with 180 to 200ms i noticed that they already made lots of adjustments to that area, on the new trials and normal raid even with high pink im able to evade AoE almost based of the animation only, since they're triggering a lot faster. This is something that some of my friends alrady noticed.

That said, yeah the cast bar triggering the animation before its completion is a bit weird on a programming perspective but i can be done of course if they change how those interact with each other, but since its a major problem for now i dont see it changing soon.

This remember me of some issues i used to have with my fc mates where playing as a melee would be a pain on ARR and HW because the positionals werent being registeres due to high ping, something we don't see very often nowdays. So these changes are very technical impovements that they might adress in the future but rarely announced on patch notes or interviews since they wouldnt make an impact on the major population of the game.

I agree it can be improved but we also need to keep in mind that every major system change requires them to build or rebuild the system to acomodate all new and already existent assets that depends on it, that one of the reasons why new hair or helmets for Vieras en Hrothgars arent added yet, because the chances that the one we got were made individualy are big, therefore they cant be modified easily. Of course thats only things that we can deduce, since this kind of informaton isnt revelead to the public