

Final Fantasy XIV Titan issues that need addressing

There are often discussions concerning Titan and why people struggle with it. I wanted to post some pictures from a video showing issues which, I feel, contribute to the confusion and problems people have with being tagged by an event during a Titan battle.


Image 1: The Castbar

The castbar (located above Titan's health bar), not the visual telegraph aid on the ground, is king when it comes to determining when a spell has begun and completed its casting. The first issue here then should be obvious: the casting of "Weight of the Land" has begun, and yet our hero (center screen) is likely oblivious to this event because the visual telegraph has not yet been applied to the scene. In reality he needs to be moving already, he just doesn't know it yet unless he's actively monitoring Titan's castbar (and I believe very few people outside of tanks bother to do that). And even if he did start running, without the telegraph it's tricky to know where to safely run to.


Image 2: The Telegraph

We fast forward a few moments and the castbar has completely filled and vanished - at this point the casting of "Weight of the Land" has completed. And yet, the telegraph for it still remains on the ground, giving our hero the impression that the casting process is still ongoing. This is the "you're already screwed, you just don't know it yet" moment. This is the point where the server is determining whether or not our hero has cleared the AOE (and it's clear that he hasn't). What should be happening here is the game should be displaying Weight of the Land's explosion effect and damage numbers, not its telegraph.


Image 3: The Deception

Moments later our hero has cleared the telegraph and believes that he is "safe". In reality he is being deceived by the game - the telegraph lingers on the ground giving the appearance that the casting process is still underway, and while our hero has cleared the AOE we know from the prior image that he didn't clear it in time. Remember, the castbar is king, and the castbar was already gone in the prior image.


Image 4: The Lull

Why this moment of nothing (no telegraph, no explosion effect) even exists is anyone's guess. It's just giving our hero more time to move, more time to believe he's safely escaped (when in reality he hasn't). This period of nothing shouldn't exist - at this point we should be staring at the lingering remains of an explosion effect that should have started two images back.


Image 5: Better Late Than Never

The explosion effect finally begins, far later than it should have. Our hero is clearly out of the impact zone, but that doesn't matter because the game only cares about where the player was back in image 2, when the cast bar completed and he was still in the AOE.


Image 6: Reality Dawns

Finally, here the game delivers the bad news: much to his surprise, our hero didn't make it. In a moment the game will get around to depleting the remainder of his health bar and he'll fall over dead. This damage should have been applied back at image 2, but for some reason the game delays sending this information and ultimately confuses the player.


And all that, I feel, is a large part of the problem. Had the explosion and damage been applied back at image 2 where it needed to be, our hero would learn that they are not removing themselves from the AOE quickly enough. Instead, our hero believes they did everything correctly - they cleared the AOE before the damage was applied, before the explosion effect rendered, even before the telegraph vanished. In their minds there is nothing for them to improve on here, they are simply being screwed over by the game, lag, etc.


All of this needs to be tightened up - whether it's the castbar timer being lengthened to match the effects, or the effects displaying sooner to match the castbar... the important thing is that the castbar and telegraph need to start and stop at precisely the same moment, and the explosion effect and damage need to be applied immediately following the removal of the castbar and telegraph.. not moments later. And if that's not possible, then the developers need to lighten up on Titan, because it's not fair to demand perfect performance if the server itself can't deliver it. Until then, you're going to get players claiming they were out of the AOE. And, to be fair, they are not completely wrong about that based on what the game is showing them.

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