Combat would be really fun if they halved the gcd and cast times.
This. While the combat is vastly superior to FFXI and XIV 1.0, the 2.5 second GCD is holding it back.
I don't understand this mentality. Faster does not equal better. I'm pressing keys for abilities nearly non-stop as it is. There's no need to be pressing even faster for the same result, and speed up animations to the point they aren't nearly as awesome and fun to see. They also couldn't get away with things like the Ninja jumping on top of the enemies for an attack and stuff.
No, their current system is definitely not holding it back. Your "ideal" system would, however.
Originally posted by woodyfly From what I've seen, combat seems to be slow and boring but I do consider that I might enjoy if I personally try it. Did anyone think they would hate the combat but actually liked it when they played the game?
I did, and tbh the combat in this game still isn't my fav.
However, it's simple enough that everyone can get into it, and it's really the graphics of the game that drive it. It looks great.
There are certain abilities that also feel really nice to use (getting clutch flares, jumps, limit breaks, banes, etc.). There is also a pretty decent range of playstyles. You have some classes that are really simple to play (like bard), and you have other classes that are somewhat complex (like summoner, dragoon). You have some that seem complex and are easy, and some that seem easy but are somewhat complex.
It really depends on what type of games you're looking for. If you enjoy most MMOs, and you like final fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this game.
If you're looking for a game with very tricky / challenging gameplay, or are not a fan of final fantasy, this may not be the best game for you.
Overall I like the tempo of the combat system. There's several mechanics and telegraphs to dodge that if the pacing were any faster you'd just be wasting attacks since you wouldn't actually be ABLE to attack every 1.5 second or whatever people want.
I feel the system could use some tweaks, such as individualizing the limit break animations per job and having some interaction between players with their combos, (I do miss skill chains/magic bursts from FFXI) but overall it works well.
i think most people complaining about the gcd never really got past the lower levels because once you get higher things get faster as you're not only using abilities with gcd's anymore.. it's just that for some reason they've decided to leave the training wheels on for quite some time and it's not really until you start on your job that things start to get more fluid(around lvl 30)
Combat would be really fun if they halved the gcd and cast times.
This. While the combat is vastly superior to FFXI and XIV 1.0, the 2.5 second GCD is holding it back.
I don't understand this mentality. Faster does not equal better. I'm pressing keys for abilities nearly non-stop as it is. There's no need to be pressing even faster for the same result, and speed up animations to the point they aren't nearly as awesome and fun to see. They also couldn't get away with things like the Ninja jumping on top of the enemies for an attack and stuff.
No, their current system is definitely not holding it back. Your "ideal" system would, however.
And that's fine for you. Nothing wrong with that.
I, on the other hand, don't need 2.5 seconds to decide what to do or what is the best course of action to take next. The second i hit an ability, i already know what i'm going to do next depending on any number of factors based on mob interaction. A 1 second GCD works best for me.
The majority of gameplay vids I've watched seem to indicate the same may be true for many others as well. I see many players spamming their next attack button trying to get it to go off as soon as possible.
I understand why they have a long GCD and it has nothing to do with SE preferring it that way.
Combat would be really fun if they halved the gcd and cast times.
This. While the combat is vastly superior to FFXI and XIV 1.0, the 2.5 second GCD is holding it back.
I don't understand this mentality. Faster does not equal better. I'm pressing keys for abilities nearly non-stop as it is. There's no need to be pressing even faster for the same result, and speed up animations to the point they aren't nearly as awesome and fun to see. They also couldn't get away with things like the Ninja jumping on top of the enemies for an attack and stuff.
No, their current system is definitely not holding it back. Your "ideal" system would, however.
And that's fine for you. Nothing wrong with that.
I, on the other hand, don't need 2.5 seconds to decide what to do or what is the best course of action to take next. The second i hit an ability, i already know what i'm going to do next depending on any number of factors based on mob interaction. A 1 second GCD works best for me.
The majority of gameplay vids I've watched seem to indicate the same may be true for many others as well. I see many players spamming their next attack button trying to get it to go off as soon as possible.
I understand why they have a long GCD and it has nothing to do with SE preferring it that way.
All I can see is the epic combat animations and fights becoming quick, bland and distorted with a 1 second GCD. I disagree in regards to the 2.5 second GCD not being what SE prefers. If YoshiP truly saw this being a major boon to the game, he would have worked with it instead.
Regardless, I've made my argument, and you've made yours, and neither of us are gonna win, so have fun with whatever game is working for you, and I'll do the same.
I can see what some folks are saying about it getting faster at higher levels. I have a 50 paladin and it is so agonizingly slow especially if I get talked into tanking a dungeon its just plain bad class design. Most of my enmity management share that 2.5 second gcd. So if a dps pulls a mob off me and I just hit an attack, its 2.5 seconds of me just watching mobs run amok, unable to do a damn thing about it. So the solution is to save my gcd for when something bad happens. Which means I'm auto attacking about half the time which is safe but boring.
I also have a 50 arcanist and summoner and they are more interesting but its still a lot of time watching a long gcd as I apply all my dots.
The GCD and the cast times for even the most simple of spells is the reason i had to stop playing it. Its a great game but i just couldnt do it. This age of games moving to more twitchy and positional combat and this game goes the other direction. Good luck its not for me.
All I can see is the epic combat animations and fights becoming quick, bland and distorted with a 1 second GCD. I disagree in regards to the 2.5 second GCD not being what SE prefers. If YoshiP truly saw this being a major boon to the game, he would have worked with it instead.
Regardless, I've made my argument, and you've made yours, and neither of us are gonna win, so have fun with whatever game is working for you, and I'll do the same.
The amusing thing is in beta the GCD was actually 3 seconds. After a lot of feedback the dev team decided to lower it another half a second and most people felt like it played better after that.
There's games out there that fulfill the more action-oriented combat. This one has decided not to go that route.
All I can see is the epic combat animations and fights becoming quick, bland and distorted with a 1 second GCD. I disagree in regards to the 2.5 second GCD not being what SE prefers. If YoshiP truly saw this being a major boon to the game, he would have worked with it instead.
Regardless, I've made my argument, and you've made yours, and neither of us are gonna win, so have fun with whatever game is working for you, and I'll do the same.
The amusing thing is in beta the GCD was actually 3 seconds. After a lot of feedback the dev team decided to lower it another half a second and most people felt like it played better after that.
There's games out there that fulfill the more action-oriented combat. This one has decided not to go that route.
I had no idea about the 3 second GCD. Was that overflow from the 1.0 game? I can't remember a ton about that since I only played it for a week or so.
But that's right. They lowered it a bit more, and they felt it went well enough with their design plans and adapted. If they thought a 1 second GCD would have helped the system, they would have done the same. As it stands, it's a good balance of action, strategy and reflex without resorting to a twitch gameplay style, which is definitely more niche in the MMORPG genre.
So guys, I eventually bought the game on 50% steam sale and.... I think this is the most boring combat out of all mmorpgs I've ever played in 10 years
I've been spamming my "stone" spell for 6 hours straight every 2.5 seconds. Switching to another class is the same thing, replace "stone" with "insertabilityname"
The combat design in ffxiv has little to do with how fast you press your keyboard, but more into a mush of everything , positioning , timing and tactical combat. It is though not realized I would say Until you start Binding Coil.
I never felt the rush of killing a boss like I do in T6-T7 in Coil, and this means the combat is alright imo. In terms of PvP, there are 5 skills on top of cross class skills and some class/job skills all NOT on GCD, so the trick will be how you combine all together with GCD skills. it makes the pvp much more enjoyable but very few see that. I know in Frontlines though, people will realize how fast the combat skills requirment is if you want to excell.
So guys, I eventually bought the game on 50% steam sale and.... I think this is the most boring combat out of all mmorpgs I've ever played in 10 years
I've been spamming my "stone" spell for 6 hours straight every 2.5 seconds. Switching to another class is the same thing, replace "stone" with "insertabilityname"
Yeah the starting levels are super terrible for any class, especially since u have no duel class spells either havent you heard?
Dual class spells don't help if they're also share the same 2.5gcd, lol. I know i'll eventually get a larger array of skills not on GCD but that's more late game, as of right now I don't know if I can even make it to late game
Slow has nothing to do with good combat what so ever,surprised people are even mentioning that aspect.
I played FFXI for years and is imo the best combat design bar none.The problem i saw even before the game was released was not enough abilities/spells for each class.This imo was because the game was rushed and the design also supports the lack of so i knew it was not going to be very good combat.
So i expected a weak combat system and imo it is,however they still have great creatures to fight that also look better than other games.Now if i compare it to other games outside of FFXI it is hit n miss,for example EQ NEXT is going to do almost the same thing and other games are severely limiting your choices so ends up the same thing as well.
The reason why slower combat is the best is because it offers a act and react type of combat,otherwise it is just button spamming like we see in almost every game with their 1-2 second timers.However you NEED MANY choices to make reactive combat work otherwise you are back to button spamming those few choices.
Even though it seems like a Role/trinity type design it really is not as each class performs almost identical when solo.It does of course utilize the trinity design when playing grouped content,sadly that is a lot like every other game on the planet,aka WOW syndrome of soloing all game then co-op Boss fights.Even the Boss fights at least early game are beatable with only 3 players so not very group oriented the way old school games were aka FFXI using 6 man groups.FFXIV does open up to larger groups later in game,like level 50 end game play.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Combat is fine as it is. I dont mind if it will be faster or slower, but when I see how many players sucks at this game (they are slow or without analytical/future thinking) I am happy that GCD is 2.5. I am always laughting when player with relic wepon are doing about 100dps when about 300is normal (and its majority of players). Do you think they can react better if GCD will be lower? It will be like they will do 200 while 700will be OK.
Also I am playing healer most of time and its cool in SCOB when you acctually have to decide which action or who will receive heal in which order. Its acctually matter because you can heal 1 than 2.5s nobody so you have to think not just mindlessly spam heal over everybody-because you can.
Originally posted by Vasel The GCD and the cast times for even the most simple of spells is the reason i had to stop playing it. Its a great game but i just couldnt do it. This age of games moving to more twitchy and positional combat and this game goes the other direction. Good luck its not for me.
So because GW2 and Wildstar have twitchy combat, every other game should too..? FFXIV is classic final fantasy, it's exactly what fans have been asking for for years now. I would absolutely hate twitchy combat in this game.
So guys, I eventually bought the game on 50% steam sale and.... I think this is the most boring combat out of all mmorpgs I've ever played in 10 years
I've been spamming my "stone" spell for 6 hours straight every 2.5 seconds. Switching to another class is the same thing, replace "stone" with "insertabilityname"
Yeah the starting levels are super terrible for any class, especially since u have no duel class spells either havent you heard?
Dual class spells don't help if they're also share the same 2.5gcd, lol. I know i'll eventually get a larger array of skills not on GCD but that's more late game, as of right now I don't know if I can even make it to late game
Originally posted by kairel182 The combat wasn't the real issue with the game, although it was a little slow for the style (FFXI was incredibly slow, but it felt right within the game world). And you see here is the problem, the world, or lack thereof. It was a shoe-box in relative terms to actual real sized MMO worlds. The coupled with the fact that some zones literally had 3-4 mobs for a quest that took 10+ with hundreds of people at a time in one little area was just unbearable to me. I like freedom and exploration, but without even counting that playing by the game's rules was just infuriating. One person could dominate an entire area of 'farming.' Which brings me to another point; lack of loot. For a game that boasts so many crafting classes and so much work involved to craft even the basic pieces, why is there so few things dropped from anything, anywhere? Some mobs don't even have a loot table to even speak of, meaning they're worthless to kill unless you have a quest. Everything in FFXI dropped something of use, whether it was just crystals for basic crafting or crafting mats themselves. NPC's in FFXIV barely even drop gil, whereas in FFXI they were capable of not only decent gil drops but trade items AND gear relative to their level range. All these little things added up to people just sitting around one or two zones spamming for instance invites or queuing up for random groups, which was further compounded by the additions of "Hard" and "Extreme" modes, which recycled content. It was WoW emulated in every possible bad way, while they cut out some really annoying factors to FFXI, they forgot where their true soul comes from and what made so many fans of the genre.
Meh, half of what you wrote is not true. Too tired to type it all out haha
Originally posted by kairel182 The combat wasn't the real issue with the game, although it was a little slow for the style (FFXI was incredibly slow, but it felt right within the game world).
And you see here is the problem, the world, or lack thereof. It was a shoe-box in relative terms to actual real sized MMO worlds. The coupled with the fact that some zones literally had 3-4 mobs for a quest that took 10+ with hundreds of people at a time in one little area was just unbearable to me. I like freedom and exploration, but without even counting that playing by the game's rules was just infuriating. One person could dominate an entire area of 'farming.'
Which brings me to another point; lack of loot. For a game that boasts so many crafting classes and so much work involved to craft even the basic pieces, why is there so few things dropped from anything, anywhere? Some mobs don't even have a loot table to even speak of, meaning they're worthless to kill unless you have a quest. Everything in FFXI dropped something of use, whether it was just crystals for basic crafting or crafting mats themselves. NPC's in FFXIV barely even drop gil, whereas in FFXI they were capable of not only decent gil drops but trade items AND gear relative to their level range.
All these little things added up to people just sitting around one or two zones spamming for instance invites or queuing up for random groups, which was further compounded by the additions of "Hard" and "Extreme" modes, which recycled content. It was WoW emulated in every possible bad way, while they cut out some really annoying factors to FFXI, they forgot where their true soul comes from and what made so many fans of the genre.
Meh, half of what you wrote is not true. Too tired to type it all out haha
^ Lol I feel the same way but whatever, typing time.
2.5 GCD is fine because there's enough core abilities off the GCD.
The main reason you feel like this game lacks a world is because ffxiv is mostly instanced and follows a vertical progression where FFXI follows a horizontal and mostly open world.
If they put in open world bosses with top tier loot, they will get zerged for freebies and everyone will quit because the game is a joke
If they put in open world dungeons with multiple paths, the best path will get zerged etc etc
In worked in FFXI because like I said in another thread, the population by modern standard was extremely low as was the amount of abilities going off per second.
The lack of loot arguement doesn't even make sense. Peoples armourys are filled with gear and mobs drop crafting material and don't drop gil because rather than grinding mobs for money they wanted to be smart and have an actual marketboard trade center, not people zerging mobs for gil drops.
Yeah, I thought combat would suck too. I hated it until around level 40; but eventually it got faster and I liked it. I find it funny however, that the WORST thing about the combat is the GCD, according to many people. Thats it. The same cant be said for many other games on the market. Still, I breathe PvP, so the GCD is a bit annoying. I'm used to instantaneous combat.
Originally posted by kairel182 The combat wasn't the real issue with the game, although it was a little slow for the style (FFXI was incredibly slow, but it felt right within the game world).
And you see here is the problem, the world, or lack thereof. It was a shoe-box in relative terms to actual real sized MMO worlds. The coupled with the fact that some zones literally had 3-4 mobs for a quest that took 10+ with hundreds of people at a time in one little area was just unbearable to me. I like freedom and exploration, but without even counting that playing by the game's rules was just infuriating. One person could dominate an entire area of 'farming.'
Which brings me to another point; lack of loot. For a game that boasts so many crafting classes and so much work involved to craft even the basic pieces, why is there so few things dropped from anything, anywhere? Some mobs don't even have a loot table to even speak of, meaning they're worthless to kill unless you have a quest. Everything in FFXI dropped something of use, whether it was just crystals for basic crafting or crafting mats themselves. NPC's in FFXIV barely even drop gil, whereas in FFXI they were capable of not only decent gil drops but trade items AND gear relative to their level range.
All these little things added up to people just sitting around one or two zones spamming for instance invites or queuing up for random groups, which was further compounded by the additions of "Hard" and "Extreme" modes, which recycled content. It was WoW emulated in every possible bad way, while they cut out some really annoying factors to FFXI, they forgot where their true soul comes from and what made so many fans of the genre.
Meh, half of what you wrote is not true. Too tired to type it all out haha
In worked in FFXI because like I said in another thread, the population by modern standard was extremely low
This was not true per server population. Modern MMO player caps are much lower than they used to be. An average Saturday night i remember having 4400 players online when i did a search on my server. I wouldn't be surprised if it were half that now. It was much easier on the server when the entire game was based on auto attacks though.
Originally posted by kairel182 The combat wasn't the real issue with the game, although it was a little slow for the style (FFXI was incredibly slow, but it felt right within the game world).
And you see here is the problem, the world, or lack thereof. It was a shoe-box in relative terms to actual real sized MMO worlds. The coupled with the fact that some zones literally had 3-4 mobs for a quest that took 10+ with hundreds of people at a time in one little area was just unbearable to me. I like freedom and exploration, but without even counting that playing by the game's rules was just infuriating. One person could dominate an entire area of 'farming.'
Which brings me to another point; lack of loot. For a game that boasts so many crafting classes and so much work involved to craft even the basic pieces, why is there so few things dropped from anything, anywhere? Some mobs don't even have a loot table to even speak of, meaning they're worthless to kill unless you have a quest. Everything in FFXI dropped something of use, whether it was just crystals for basic crafting or crafting mats themselves. NPC's in FFXIV barely even drop gil, whereas in FFXI they were capable of not only decent gil drops but trade items AND gear relative to their level range.
All these little things added up to people just sitting around one or two zones spamming for instance invites or queuing up for random groups, which was further compounded by the additions of "Hard" and "Extreme" modes, which recycled content. It was WoW emulated in every possible bad way, while they cut out some really annoying factors to FFXI, they forgot where their true soul comes from and what made so many fans of the genre.
Meh, half of what you wrote is not true. Too tired to type it all out haha
In worked in FFXI because like I said in another thread, the population by modern standard was extremely low
This was not true per server population. Modern MMO player caps are much lower than they used to be. An average Saturday night i remember having 4400 players online when i did a search on my server. I wouldn't be surprised if it were half that now. It was much easier on the server when the entire game was based on auto attacks though.
What the first post said is pretty much 100% true, they designed half the mobs in the "trash mobs" idea where they drop nothing. The Devs themselves said they did it that way (and made exp off them crap) to prevent people from doing old school grind camps (why the hell you would build against another leveling option is beyond me...)
The wold is fantastic looking, but it is pretty small and mostly linear. The big problem comes from the massive lack of open world events that are not generic quests and FATEs . The one thing i think i would enjoy is those new "Hunts" that bring back NM's in a way but pre-claimed, which is just fine. They really need to get away from everything being instanced and use the world they made that looks so damn pretty, other wise it will stay as is with everyone sitting in the zone with the "tomes" venders.
As for the combat speed it works, though coming from and old EQ/FFXI player it feels spammy, partially because of what i was used to and the other part due to rotations coming into play pretty early and it can feel old quick.
And the population per server on XI was just as high as pretty much every other MMO ive seen with servers when it was in its prime around the 5k mark, and that game's world is much larger and more open to begin with. Of course now its pretty low with most hovering around 1k~ at best, but the game has more servers than it needs for as really freakin old as it has become (even if you hate the game you have to give it props for being able staying p2p for 12+ years)
Originally posted by kairel182 The combat wasn't the real issue with the game, although it was a little slow for the style (FFXI was incredibly slow, but it felt right within the game world).
And you see here is the problem, the world, or lack thereof. It was a shoe-box in relative terms to actual real sized MMO worlds. The coupled with the fact that some zones literally had 3-4 mobs for a quest that took 10+ with hundreds of people at a time in one little area was just unbearable to me. I like freedom and exploration, but without even counting that playing by the game's rules was just infuriating. One person could dominate an entire area of 'farming.'
Which brings me to another point; lack of loot. For a game that boasts so many crafting classes and so much work involved to craft even the basic pieces, why is there so few things dropped from anything, anywhere? Some mobs don't even have a loot table to even speak of, meaning they're worthless to kill unless you have a quest. Everything in FFXI dropped something of use, whether it was just crystals for basic crafting or crafting mats themselves. NPC's in FFXIV barely even drop gil, whereas in FFXI they were capable of not only decent gil drops but trade items AND gear relative to their level range.
All these little things added up to people just sitting around one or two zones spamming for instance invites or queuing up for random groups, which was further compounded by the additions of "Hard" and "Extreme" modes, which recycled content. It was WoW emulated in every possible bad way, while they cut out some really annoying factors to FFXI, they forgot where their true soul comes from and what made so many fans of the genre.
Meh, half of what you wrote is not true. Too tired to type it all out haha
In worked in FFXI because like I said in another thread, the population by modern standard was extremely low
This was not true per server population. Modern MMO player caps are much lower than they used to be. An average Saturday night i remember having 4400 players online when i did a search on my server. I wouldn't be surprised if it were half that now. It was much easier on the server when the entire game was based on auto attacks though.
They really need to get away from everything being instanced and use the world they made that looks so damn pretty, other wise it will stay as is with everyone sitting in the zone with the "tomes" venders.
^ I'm all for that but the bosses have to continue being instanced or they won't be difficult. Of course they're going to continue pumping out instanced raid tiers and primals or raiders and pve players would have nothing to do, the thing WoW and FFXIV and many other games need to do though is more stuff to do out in the world for when its not a raiding night. Every single piece of actual content they throw into the open world is going to get eaten up by the server swarm therefore can't be that rewarding or its going to be disgustingly easy and break the game.
I think the hunts they're adding are a nice step towards more stuff to do in the world, but its not like their rewards are insane because they can't be.
More stuff to do in the open world that doesn't break the game is something mmos with vertical progression currently must work to overcome, this is very well known and the most common reason an individual would stay away from any game with it.
Originally posted by monochrome19 Yeah, I thought combat would suck too. I hated it until around level 40; but eventually it got faster and I liked it. I find it funny however, that the WORST thing about the combat is the GCD, according to many people. Thats it. The same cant be said for many other games on the market. Still, I breathe PvP, so the GCD is a bit annoying. I'm used to instantaneous combat.
on top of all the off GCD skills in PVE, you get an additional 5 more pvp skills that are all off GCD as well. believe me when I say it would be instant
@Chrisbox I think thats why old systems like claiming worked for more open world objectives, though of course it had its negatives too, mostly hack/bot related, the compition is fine as long as what comes from stuff like HNMs are not overly valuable and especially sellable. 1.0 did i think a great job with that (aside from later needing NMs for certain things) where you could hunt NMs if you wanted which dropped good for its level gear, but pop times were low and everything way not tradable so people never really fought over it often. They even made the ones that were high end that more people wanted for endgame stuff not only pop (though a bit longer gaps between them, but not unreasonable) but you could do a string of leve's and get a leve that popped it for your group so you didnt even have to camp it if you didnt want.
No claim from what i can tell is really the big thing that prevents open world "boss" fights. Doing more pop-able stuff like hunts and making the drops be close to the top stuff, but making it different (with special stats or having the stats be mixed differently) would work fine imo. Im not a fan of the constant leveling up in gear and only really having one top set (or just really one ish of every lvl). I think either closing the gap a lot more from how drastic it can be now or having much more choices in sets at the same level means you can spread it out onto more than what is right now "coil" basically.
Would it be more challenging to balance? sure, but having one event hold pretty much all the top gear by a good margin imo is dull and people will get and and find nothing else to do very quickly.
Comments
I don't understand this mentality. Faster does not equal better. I'm pressing keys for abilities nearly non-stop as it is. There's no need to be pressing even faster for the same result, and speed up animations to the point they aren't nearly as awesome and fun to see. They also couldn't get away with things like the Ninja jumping on top of the enemies for an attack and stuff.
No, their current system is definitely not holding it back. Your "ideal" system would, however.
I did, and tbh the combat in this game still isn't my fav.
However, it's simple enough that everyone can get into it, and it's really the graphics of the game that drive it. It looks great.
There are certain abilities that also feel really nice to use (getting clutch flares, jumps, limit breaks, banes, etc.). There is also a pretty decent range of playstyles. You have some classes that are really simple to play (like bard), and you have other classes that are somewhat complex (like summoner, dragoon). You have some that seem complex and are easy, and some that seem easy but are somewhat complex.
It really depends on what type of games you're looking for. If you enjoy most MMOs, and you like final fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this game.
If you're looking for a game with very tricky / challenging gameplay, or are not a fan of final fantasy, this may not be the best game for you.
Overall I like the tempo of the combat system. There's several mechanics and telegraphs to dodge that if the pacing were any faster you'd just be wasting attacks since you wouldn't actually be ABLE to attack every 1.5 second or whatever people want.
I feel the system could use some tweaks, such as individualizing the limit break animations per job and having some interaction between players with their combos, (I do miss skill chains/magic bursts from FFXI) but overall it works well.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
And that's fine for you. Nothing wrong with that.
I, on the other hand, don't need 2.5 seconds to decide what to do or what is the best course of action to take next. The second i hit an ability, i already know what i'm going to do next depending on any number of factors based on mob interaction. A 1 second GCD works best for me.
The majority of gameplay vids I've watched seem to indicate the same may be true for many others as well. I see many players spamming their next attack button trying to get it to go off as soon as possible.
I understand why they have a long GCD and it has nothing to do with SE preferring it that way.
All I can see is the epic combat animations and fights becoming quick, bland and distorted with a 1 second GCD. I disagree in regards to the 2.5 second GCD not being what SE prefers. If YoshiP truly saw this being a major boon to the game, he would have worked with it instead.
Regardless, I've made my argument, and you've made yours, and neither of us are gonna win, so have fun with whatever game is working for you, and I'll do the same.
I can see what some folks are saying about it getting faster at higher levels. I have a 50 paladin and it is so agonizingly slow especially if I get talked into tanking a dungeon its just plain bad class design. Most of my enmity management share that 2.5 second gcd. So if a dps pulls a mob off me and I just hit an attack, its 2.5 seconds of me just watching mobs run amok, unable to do a damn thing about it. So the solution is to save my gcd for when something bad happens. Which means I'm auto attacking about half the time which is safe but boring.
I also have a 50 arcanist and summoner and they are more interesting but its still a lot of time watching a long gcd as I apply all my dots.
The amusing thing is in beta the GCD was actually 3 seconds. After a lot of feedback the dev team decided to lower it another half a second and most people felt like it played better after that.
There's games out there that fulfill the more action-oriented combat. This one has decided not to go that route.
I had no idea about the 3 second GCD. Was that overflow from the 1.0 game? I can't remember a ton about that since I only played it for a week or so.
But that's right. They lowered it a bit more, and they felt it went well enough with their design plans and adapted. If they thought a 1 second GCD would have helped the system, they would have done the same. As it stands, it's a good balance of action, strategy and reflex without resorting to a twitch gameplay style, which is definitely more niche in the MMORPG genre.
So guys, I eventually bought the game on 50% steam sale and.... I think this is the most boring combat out of all mmorpgs I've ever played in 10 years
I've been spamming my "stone" spell for 6 hours straight every 2.5 seconds. Switching to another class is the same thing, replace "stone" with "insertabilityname"
The combat design in ffxiv has little to do with how fast you press your keyboard, but more into a mush of everything , positioning , timing and tactical combat. It is though not realized I would say Until you start Binding Coil.
I never felt the rush of killing a boss like I do in T6-T7 in Coil, and this means the combat is alright imo. In terms of PvP, there are 5 skills on top of cross class skills and some class/job skills all NOT on GCD, so the trick will be how you combine all together with GCD skills. it makes the pvp much more enjoyable but very few see that. I know in Frontlines though, people will realize how fast the combat skills requirment is if you want to excell.
Dual class spells don't help if they're also share the same 2.5gcd, lol. I know i'll eventually get a larger array of skills not on GCD but that's more late game, as of right now I don't know if I can even make it to late game
Slow has nothing to do with good combat what so ever,surprised people are even mentioning that aspect.
I played FFXI for years and is imo the best combat design bar none.The problem i saw even before the game was released was not enough abilities/spells for each class.This imo was because the game was rushed and the design also supports the lack of so i knew it was not going to be very good combat.
So i expected a weak combat system and imo it is,however they still have great creatures to fight that also look better than other games.Now if i compare it to other games outside of FFXI it is hit n miss,for example EQ NEXT is going to do almost the same thing and other games are severely limiting your choices so ends up the same thing as well.
The reason why slower combat is the best is because it offers a act and react type of combat,otherwise it is just button spamming like we see in almost every game with their 1-2 second timers.However you NEED MANY choices to make reactive combat work otherwise you are back to button spamming those few choices.
Even though it seems like a Role/trinity type design it really is not as each class performs almost identical when solo.It does of course utilize the trinity design when playing grouped content,sadly that is a lot like every other game on the planet,aka WOW syndrome of soloing all game then co-op Boss fights.Even the Boss fights at least early game are beatable with only 3 players so not very group oriented the way old school games were aka FFXI using 6 man groups.FFXIV does open up to larger groups later in game,like level 50 end game play.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Combat is fine as it is. I dont mind if it will be faster or slower, but when I see how many players sucks at this game (they are slow or without analytical/future thinking) I am happy that GCD is 2.5. I am always laughting when player with relic wepon are doing about 100dps when about 300is normal (and its majority of players). Do you think they can react better if GCD will be lower? It will be like they will do 200 while 700will be OK.
Also I am playing healer most of time and its cool in SCOB when you acctually have to decide which action or who will receive heal in which order. Its acctually matter because you can heal 1 than 2.5s nobody so you have to think not just mindlessly spam heal over everybody-because you can.
So because GW2 and Wildstar have twitchy combat, every other game should too..? FFXIV is classic final fantasy, it's exactly what fans have been asking for for years now. I would absolutely hate twitchy combat in this game.
Play monk
^ Lol I feel the same way but whatever, typing time.
2.5 GCD is fine because there's enough core abilities off the GCD.
The main reason you feel like this game lacks a world is because ffxiv is mostly instanced and follows a vertical progression where FFXI follows a horizontal and mostly open world.
If they put in open world bosses with top tier loot, they will get zerged for freebies and everyone will quit because the game is a joke
If they put in open world dungeons with multiple paths, the best path will get zerged etc etc
In worked in FFXI because like I said in another thread, the population by modern standard was extremely low as was the amount of abilities going off per second.
The lack of loot arguement doesn't even make sense. Peoples armourys are filled with gear and mobs drop crafting material and don't drop gil because rather than grinding mobs for money they wanted to be smart and have an actual marketboard trade center, not people zerging mobs for gil drops.
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This was not true per server population. Modern MMO player caps are much lower than they used to be. An average Saturday night i remember having 4400 players online when i did a search on my server. I wouldn't be surprised if it were half that now. It was much easier on the server when the entire game was based on auto attacks though.
What the first post said is pretty much 100% true, they designed half the mobs in the "trash mobs" idea where they drop nothing. The Devs themselves said they did it that way (and made exp off them crap) to prevent people from doing old school grind camps (why the hell you would build against another leveling option is beyond me...)
The wold is fantastic looking, but it is pretty small and mostly linear. The big problem comes from the massive lack of open world events that are not generic quests and FATEs . The one thing i think i would enjoy is those new "Hunts" that bring back NM's in a way but pre-claimed, which is just fine. They really need to get away from everything being instanced and use the world they made that looks so damn pretty, other wise it will stay as is with everyone sitting in the zone with the "tomes" venders.
As for the combat speed it works, though coming from and old EQ/FFXI player it feels spammy, partially because of what i was used to and the other part due to rotations coming into play pretty early and it can feel old quick.
And the population per server on XI was just as high as pretty much every other MMO ive seen with servers when it was in its prime around the 5k mark, and that game's world is much larger and more open to begin with. Of course now its pretty low with most hovering around 1k~ at best, but the game has more servers than it needs for as really freakin old as it has become (even if you hate the game you have to give it props for being able staying p2p for 12+ years)
^ I'm all for that but the bosses have to continue being instanced or they won't be difficult. Of course they're going to continue pumping out instanced raid tiers and primals or raiders and pve players would have nothing to do, the thing WoW and FFXIV and many other games need to do though is more stuff to do out in the world for when its not a raiding night. Every single piece of actual content they throw into the open world is going to get eaten up by the server swarm therefore can't be that rewarding or its going to be disgustingly easy and break the game.
I think the hunts they're adding are a nice step towards more stuff to do in the world, but its not like their rewards are insane because they can't be.
More stuff to do in the open world that doesn't break the game is something mmos with vertical progression currently must work to overcome, this is very well known and the most common reason an individual would stay away from any game with it.
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on top of all the off GCD skills in PVE, you get an additional 5 more pvp skills that are all off GCD as well. believe me when I say it would be instant
@Chrisbox I think thats why old systems like claiming worked for more open world objectives, though of course it had its negatives too, mostly hack/bot related, the compition is fine as long as what comes from stuff like HNMs are not overly valuable and especially sellable. 1.0 did i think a great job with that (aside from later needing NMs for certain things) where you could hunt NMs if you wanted which dropped good for its level gear, but pop times were low and everything way not tradable so people never really fought over it often. They even made the ones that were high end that more people wanted for endgame stuff not only pop (though a bit longer gaps between them, but not unreasonable) but you could do a string of leve's and get a leve that popped it for your group so you didnt even have to camp it if you didnt want.
No claim from what i can tell is really the big thing that prevents open world "boss" fights. Doing more pop-able stuff like hunts and making the drops be close to the top stuff, but making it different (with special stats or having the stats be mixed differently) would work fine imo. Im not a fan of the constant leveling up in gear and only really having one top set (or just really one ish of every lvl). I think either closing the gap a lot more from how drastic it can be now or having much more choices in sets at the same level means you can spread it out onto more than what is right now "coil" basically.
Would it be more challenging to balance? sure, but having one event hold pretty much all the top gear by a good margin imo is dull and people will get and and find nothing else to do very quickly.