Spirit game mechanics are bugged

[Malamasala]

Hello. I've been playing since 2003, and I encountered this bug around 2004. Since then I've tried most things to get this bug fixed, but felt mostly just ignored. I tried POL bug report, calling GM, posting on favored FFXI forums and even the new twitter feed.

Bug description:
When giving commands to your spirit, their personal spell timers get set to max recast.

Steps to reproduce:
A)
1) Summon a light spirit.
2) Face it towards yourself.
3) Keep using retreat every 10 seconds.

The result is that your spirit never casts any spells, because their spell timers get reset each time.

B)
1) Summon a fire spirit.
2) Wait 3 minutes (obviously the recast of spells are shorter than 3 minutes)
3) Assault an enemy.

Here you'll notice that even though you've waited 3 minutes on the spell timers, they get reset to max on assaulting and no spell is cast instantly.

Why is this a bug?

My reasoning is that if a Summoner has Avatars with 60 seconds Blood Pact recasts that do not reset, why do spirits who have 50 seconds spell timer recasts reset on assault? And why doesn't a Warriors berserk ability reset to 5 min each time they engage a monster? (To pull an insane comparison to show my point)

For the sake of functionality, you have to be able to let your timers count down between battles so they can be ready at the start of a battle. Especially in a game where battles are short. As my examples show, you can not have timers resetting every time a battle starts, unless you never want to see the job ability or spell happen.

The last argument for it being a terrible bug is that people kept exploiting another bug to bypass this bug. It is well known that if you have an aggressive monster attack you first, the spell timer is not reset when the spirit goes into defensive action and attacks the monster. It also worked if you made sure to get hate on yourself to trigger this behavior. Like using provoke during a battle, or being the person who used ranged attacks to claim the monster.

Steps to reproduce this:
1) Summon a spirit
2) Wait 1 minute (or less depending on summoning magic over cap)
3) Cast dia on a monster

This will make your spirit cast a spell INSTANTLY because it doesn't reset the spell timer to max.



I hope as the official SE forums you can finally give me the feedback I've searched for over half a decade regarding this issue. It would mean a lot to me.

[Xophious]

Hello there Malamasala!

We appreciate you taking the time to explain the gameplay concern with the spirits in the forums. We will gladly escalate the concern so that it can be investigated. As we continue to look into this, any updates will be posted within the forums once they become available. Thank you much for your patience!
-SQUARE ENIX Moderator