While it may seem that Final Fantasy XIV has been in beta for only a few months, the truth is that the game has been in beta for years. After a horrible launch in September of 2010, the game continued to be plagued with core issues like combat and questing. This eventually led Square Enix to completely overhaul the game starting in 2011 and we’re now just beginning to see the fruits of this from the current closed beta, available on PC and PS3. Like all betas, Final Fantasy 14 is having its fair share of ups with wide improvements compared to the original game and some not-so-glorious moments.

One such problem plaguing beta testers is area attacks of monsters and the damage that is applied from them. In other words, while a player might feel like they’re safe from battle and far enough from the monster, the game engine internally has drawn out a much larger damage area, thus leading to deaths of players when they thought they were safe. Final Fantasy 14 Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida addressed this and other game related news, after the jump.

Producer and director Yoshi-P here.

Thank you for all of your feedback on latency issues and the evasion of enemy attacks. As we continue working to address these issues in time for phase 4 and release, I’d like to inform you all of the current situation.

This post will focus on area attacks that are difficult to evade, or still connect even if you appear to have avoided it.

Damage taken when Ifrit uses Eruption.

When Ifrit used eruption in phase 3, the animation had a momentary build-up before the explosion. Because of this momentary buildup, there was a slight delay between the server’s check and the explosion. This has already been corrected for phase 4 and release.

Damage taken for what looked like a near miss.

1. Registering Player Damage

In phase 3, when judging whether a character was standing in an attack’s area of impact, your position was checked using a circle around your character to represent the space your character stands in. 

Furthermore, to keep the different races balanced, the radius of this circle was the same for all characters. Because of this, even if you appeared to have barely escaped the area of effect, a portion of the circle was still within range. This created the illusion that you barely evaded attack, with varying results depending on your race.
For phase 4 and release, this circle has been reduced to a single point at the center of where your character is standing to more accurately determine your position.

2. Enemy Progress Bars and Area of Impact

Being an online game, there will always be a minimal delay when input is received from the player and sent back after being processed by the server.
In FFXIV: ARR, your position is checked by the server once every 0.3 seconds. This timing is synced and processed according to the servers to prevent lag between your input and what you see. 

During phase 3, however, this syncing did not take place due to stringent server checks that took place, causing lag between what you saw on the enemy progress bar and your character’s positioning. As a result, even if you appeared to be outside the area of impact when the progress bar was filled, damage was still taken.

Adjustments are being made to reduce lag as much as possible, and syncing should improve the timing between enemy cast bars, area of effect markers, and the actual attacks.

Rest assured that we’re doing what we can to make sure players can safely evade attacks by watching enemy cast bars and markers for area attacks.

Players overseas were also affected by having to access the Japan data center in Version 1.0, as this further delayed the relay of data from the server. With the establishment of a regional data center and the above measures being taken to improve syncing with the servers, we will continue working to ensure an enjoyable gaming experience for all of our players.
(Even with a great connection, I think there’s still maybe a 0.1 second margin of error with the cast bar, so make sure to get out of the way when playing with your party. )

To help give the game a new face, FF14 will be named Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn when its released on August 27th for the PS3 and PC. After that, Square Enix plans to bring the game to the PlayStation 4 as well.

Discuss:

Are you planning on playing Final Fantasy 14 on PS3 or PC when it’s released later this year?