Please adjust the timing of AoE animation initiation

[Iecerint]

Lag is a significant problem for some users; however, many players also perceive that lag has occurred in the game when it is actually the onset of the animation/damage-assignment that has lagged rather than the calculation of their position at the end of the casting time. This has created a "lag culture" that I think can be addressed by some dev-side tweaks.

For example, this disconnect can be fixed by allowing animation wind-up for some actions to take place prior to the end of the casting bar (e.g., Titan's Landslide, Weight of the Land, Ifrit's/Ultima's Plumes).

This change will make gameplay more accurately reflect the underlying game mechanics and reduce the perception of lag. It will also make dodging feel more exciting without actually changing the gameplay at all. It will also remove some non-ergonomic mechanics (e.g., that you currently should run INTO Titan's attack animation to avoid damage from it and his bombs during Titan HM Phase 5).

Please consider it and I will look forward to it. :]

[Sove92]

Even though what matters is the cast bar, there is still undeniable lag with some AoE. It would look more sensible if the attack animation's damaging part was in sync with the cast bar, though.

[Sentinel]

I think one of the overlooked issue is that most players on PS3 and some players on PC like me are using LCD TVs (Not to be confused with regular LCD computer monitors), these TVs have response time issues, which further adds to the "lag issue" that is being discussed here. A lot of TVs have "game mode" that fixes some of these issues, I can tell you that I have one of the TVs that do not have this option.

[Iecerint]

To be clear, this thread is not designed to minimize the legitimate lag issues that people have (as a PS3 user, I understand them), but rather to highlight some ways that SE can make the non-lag nature of some damage taken as unambiguous as possible while simultaneously improving the gameplay experience for players without lag (e.g., by increasing the dramatic feeling of dodging an attack, rather than having high-level play require users to self-consciously ignore all attack animations).

@ Sentinel: I changed my PS3->TV output options, which improved matters a little bit. :]