(LL Discussion) Physical and Magical not distinguishable? UI can't implement it? Why?

[VenKitsune]

Okay so at the time of writing this, Live Letter LX is not yet over, but i wanted to pose this discussion to everyone here.
During the Q&A Between Yoship and the the UI Designer, Kei Odagiri the following was talked about -

M "I think it would be very sweet if we could see whether an attack is physical or magical in a little pop up window"

O "Ohhh yea, that would probably be very handy hehe"

O "With the current system, as how the packet transfer works, as a UI team we can't do anything about this"

Y "If we wanted.... we could probably do it"

Y "There are actions that work against physical or magical damage, so I understand that it would be more useful if you understand and can instantly see where to use it"

Y "But there is a reason on why we haven't implemented it.... We always work on the battle changes until a few days before a patch and we often had to implement final changes"

Y "If we added more features that rely on this information, it would delay development a lot"

O "It would probably overwhelm the quality assurance team"

This was from the live unofficial translation done by the ffxiv subreddit team, so keep in mind that the translation might be a little rough and may well be incorrect in some manner, keep that in mind.



I have a lot of respect for the work done on the UI by the team but....Still...Im confused by this.

Why can't Physical and magical be two seperate text colours?

Why is it so difficult? The game already knows if an attack is going to be phyiscal or magical when you're actually playing the game, why not implement a system where the text colour changes depending on if its phyiscal or magical? You dont have to colour every single attack flying text individually.

We already have additional, contextual damage popups for Parrys and Blocks etc....Why cant those resources be used in a similar way?

Infact, i was talking with a friend about this a few minutes ago which prompted me to post this on the forums....But apparently, she tells me that some third party tools ALREADY DO THIS. They display physical and magical damage taken as two seperate colours. So why cant the UI team do it if its clearly possible just from reading whats already there?

When direct hits were added, Direct Critical hits were also added as a result. This is a clear example of the flying text being changed at a fundamental level for contextual damage. Why can't Physical/Magical be done in a similar vein if all it would require is a change in colour or similar to how parrys/blocks are done?



Does anyone have the answers to these questions?

[Seraphor]

I think they were meaning more along the lines of, if a casting attack is going to deal physical or magical damage then it will look different. Which would be a more major UI change and if the damage isn't fixed to one type until days before the patch goes live, then I can see that being an issue.
They mention a 'pop up window' even, so what was being asked was quite a change to the current system.

What you mean is changing the colour of the floating text after the damage has been applied, to signify that it's magical/physical. It's after the fact, but allows you to learn without additional steps.
This is probably easier to implement, but it doesn't seem like that's what they understood as the question.

[PangTong]

I have to agree that it's odd they say it can't be done. Any given ability must clearly have some kind of data flag in it which defines whether it does magical or physical damage, since that's necessary for it do actually do the correct damage type when playing. Why can't the client simply read this information and apply some sort of simple UI change to indicate an attack's damage type? I don't see why it needs to be some kind of "extra" thing added on to attack data that will somehow cause problems when they need to make last minute changes. Just let us read what's already there.

It doesn't need to be a fancy popup or anything, just changing the text colour of the flying text or cast bar is enough. Hell, even if all that happened was that the attack had (magical) or (physical) after its damage value in the battle log, this would still be miles more helpful than the current arrangement where it's literally a complete mystery, nothing in the game will tell you what type of damage you're receiving. Instead the only way to know if an attack is magical or physical is to either use third party addons (and the fact that these addons can read the properties of an attack and display its damage type should be more than enough evidence to prove that its possible in the actual game), or to simply run experiments to see if the damage is affected by magic-only or physical-only defense buffs.

[StriderShinryu]

Seraphor already covered most of it, but the other point about "But 3rd Party Apps!" is related to the data actually being used to generate the display. All a 3rd party app has to do is read the output with no real QA or technical requirements. In other words, they're basically just reading a text file already output by the game. An in game solution would require reading both the input and output data flow, and would have to actually be tried and tested in QA to ensure basically 100% accuracy. There's a lot more going on there that 3rd party apps don't have to deal with.

Would it be possible? Yeah. Is it considered worth doing? It seems not.

[Eriane_Elis]

Better Translation: It requires effort even though it's probably really easy.

I've submitted game breaking bugs both in-game and on the forums and they get thrown in the pile of "works as intended" when it involves some form of work. I don't really understand it, they accept mundane camera "bugs" but won't accept complete character lock such as when you donate at the enclave then try to take your stuff back under certain conditions it will lock your HUD and make you unable to exit. Or when you can't chat anymore because your crafting macro ended on a controller but not on keyboard etc etc... It is what it is, they will fix what they feel like fixing. Not trying to troll, this is just my thoughts on it, not like it matters to anyone.

[KageTokage]

They already bothered giving some physical attacks a slight distinction in that the combat log says "readies" instead of "begins casting", so I don't see why they couldn't at least make that universal.

[Sicno]

This was one of many disappointing answers we got during the live letter. I think the only question that got a positive response was the one about any new UI skins. Everything else was no, no, no, no, no and more no. And the reasons were usually the same: "it requires work", "it requires work", "it requires work". Meanwhile here we're reworking gathering collectables, with a new interface and all, something that was already working well enough and nobody asked to change.

[Tint]

I don't understand it. They already gave interruptable skills a different cast bar, why is it so hard to do the same for magical attacks?

Well AoE attacks are most often magical because of DD and healer defense balance, a physical AoE would hit healers a lot harder than melees. But for tankbusters it's a guessing game, especially without any 3rd party tools. And having DRK balanced with a magical only cooldown in mind is just bad design, when a large portion of the playerbase will never be able to use it properly.

Either rework the cast bar or Dark Mind I would say o.ô

Especially when they are making a lot of things "more accessible" (Fishing? for real? Don't get me wrong, Fish Eyes is a horrible skill and a rework is appreciated, but dumbing down fishing will not lead to more people suddenly like fishing, they have long quit before they even reach the point to use that skill...), but then they leave a crucial mechanic in a state where the average player just have no idea what is going on.

[Seraphor]

I don't understand it. They already gave interruptable skills a different cast bar, why is it so hard to do the same for magical attacks?

Well AoE attacks are most often magical because of DD and healer defense balance, a physical AoE would hit healers a lot harder than melees. But for tankbusters it's a guessing game, especially without any 3rd party tools. And having DRK balanced with a magical only cooldown in mind is just bad design, when a large portion of the playerbase will never be able to use it properly.

Either rework the cast bar or Dark Mind I would say o.ô

Especially when they are making a lot of things "more accessible" (Fishing? for real? Don't get me wrong, Fish Eyes is a horrible skill and a rework is appreciated, but dumbing down fishing will not lead to more people suddenly like fishing, they have long quit before they even reach the point to use that skill...), but then they leave a crucial mechanic in a state where the average player just have no idea what is going on.

DRK shouldn't have to use Dark Mind for tank busters, and neither does GNB need to use Camouflage (parry so physical only).
They have enough tools between their 30% mitigation, their on demand shield, and Rampart/Reprisal to take anything in their stride if used correctly.

Dark Mind and Camouflage are flavour skills intended for trash pulls and chip damage.
They dont need to homogenize their only remaining unique abilities.

[Deceptus]

DRK shouldn't have to use Dark Mind for tank busters, and neither does GNB need to use Camouflage (parry so physical only).
They have enough tools between their 30% mitigation, their on demand shield, and Rampart/Reprisal to take anything in their stride if used correctly.

Dark Mind and Camouflage are flavour skills intended for trash pulls and chip damage.
They dont need to homogenize their only remaining unique abilities.

Point is you can't have skills that specifically reduce a school of attack and then not be able to determine the type of attack coming easily.

That's ridiculous.

Other games don't have this issue and FFXIV shouldn't either. There are ways around it but they refuse to implement them. The whole "readies attack" vs "begins casting attack" would be the easiest solution. But they can't even be arsed to do that and it's extremely frustrating.