On the Tyranny of Burst Windows

[SeverianLyonesse]

I made a thread about this a while ago but I think you said it better and more concisely than I did lol. It doesn't help other CDs tend to be 60s/120s as well and are clearly meant to be used under raid buffs, which doesn't leave a ton of room for interesting things happening in between.

Yes, that is another core issue I have with the burst window design. The fact that it normalizes being bored for 45 seconds out of every minute.

[Ath192]

Eh this is hard. Because this is a team based game so it makes sense that teams that know how to synchronize well should perform better than a disorganized random coalition of people executing their rotations properly.

However, if burst windows are going to dictate the design of every class I don't see that as a positive force in the game yeah... Tough choices for the dev team.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Eh this is hard. Because this is a team based game so it makes sense that teams that know how to synchronize well should perform better than a disorganized random coalition of people executing their rotations properly.

However, if burst windows are going to dictate the design of every class I don't see that as a positive force in the game yeah... Tough choices for the dev team.

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.

[MilkieTea]

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.

Not to mention, it would make parselogs more transparent for recruiters who care about numbers, since they would be only measured by raw DPS and whether you cleared, rather than trying to determine how selfish a DPS is.

I'd like to touch upon that - parse logs already are transparent in that regard. They measure both the DPS you put out on your own, your buffed DPS, and are even adjusted for support classes who rely on others to provide them better DPS.

I personally find it really fun to line up burst windows. It's satisfying when perfectly pulled off and I find that it's made me a better player to keep track of these windows and adjust myself accordingly.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

[Saraide]

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.

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.

[SieyaM]

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.

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.

[SeverianLyonesse]

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.

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.

[Roxus]

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.

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.

[baklava151]

It's also pretty insane just how much damage is concentrated in those burst windows, you can watch the boss's health drop like a rock during openers but once raid buffs wear off it slows waaaaaaay down. And if you die and get desynced from raid buffs, the death is already bad enough but your choice is delaying cooldowns to realign with 2 minutes which means possibly losing a use or permanently being out of raid buff windows the rest of the fight which feels really bad. Death should be punishing but that gets to be too much.