We interrupt your current server woes to talk about casting

[Atomisk]

Should have just made "Esc" key to cancel spell, or made it that your character didn't animation lock while moving. Like being able to have animation go off while still running. Guess that's too hard to program though. I wouldn't know, I'm not a programmer.

[Estellios]

what sucks is the huge recast timers for Burst. 15 minutes is way too long. What's the point of getting black mage if you cant use it's specific abilities without waiting a quarter of an hour? (I'm assuming freeze and other ancient magic are similar)

Convert is kind of a big deal, its essentially fixing the biggest problem with THM in endgame stuff.

[Nyx]

Convert is kind of a big deal, its essentially fixing the biggest problem with THM in endgame stuff.

That's true, I hope that the recast timer on that isn't as long as Burst though!

[NadienKirisame]

Oh well, whatever, I already gave up being angry about this change, Yoshi mentioned it coming last year already.
What I'm mad about is mainly how it's not even instant spell cast stopping and how you now will have to press H for every little thing you want to do.

You do not have to push H for everything you do... you only have to push H if you wish to turn Face Target on and off... or you can put in the command /facetarget to turn it on.

Also you will be able to turn off the sub targeting for spells so that when you cast a spell on a target you do not have to confirm twice that you want to cast it on them.

The cat is bemused =-.-=

[Darte]

Anyone notice in the video right next to the mp bar, there is a " >> " that seems to turn on when moving and off when standing still? Wonder if thats a debug tool or something going into the actual patch.

[Maxthunder]

It is about time spells get interupted when a player moves. This will also make some fights (for those who have yet to finish it) like ifrit easier. I myself had the same experirence doing ifrit, I tried to cancel the spell but guess what it didnt cancel and boom I got nailed. It has happened to everyone who has beaten ifrit. I am glad that spells will be interupted when you move as I am not sure about some, but found it odd that a mage can cast and run. This is an awesome move by the dev team and am glad that they are finally doing this for the jobs and classes.

[syntaxlies]

Convert is kind of a big deal, its essentially fixing the biggest problem with THM in endgame stuff.

Thm generally fail in moogle from MP management. Yesterday one of Our LS parsed with the archers at around 55k on thm making me a believer.

Anyways, i hope convert doesn't have a crazy long cooldown. Even 5 mins would be acceptable imo.

[Rukkirii]

Greetings!

Yoshida has posted more information about the /facetarget command that will be implemented in patch 1.21. Hopefully this will help with any confusion that some of you may have about this new function.

Hello. Producer/Director Yoshida here.

I’d like to follow up on a few things.
As stated on topics, the video was made for mouse and keyboard controls, so please keep this in mind.

Since YukiAri’s comment is extremely appropriate, I’d like to quote it.

With the H key, when you move with WASD, even if you take your finger off the keys there is still some inertia, so is this to be used for changing your direction and instant stops?

You can consider the "/facetarget (default key: H)" a shortcut for people concerned with the ability to quickly cast after moving.

As has been pointed out, the use of /facetarget is meant to stop movement and establish a line of sight with your target.

With the current PvE environment I believe there isn’t much awareness of line of sight, but once PvP comes, this is going to become necessary. However, until PvP is introduced, you don’t really need to worry about it.

Even if the input for movement in FFXIV was removed from the client side, there would still be about a 1.3m movement due to inertia (up until version 1.20). In this case, even though you all would perceive that your character has stopped moving, you character is still moving due to inertia and the server is counting this as movement.

/facetarget will immediately stop your character’s movement and quickly change direction so you are facing your target without the interference of the movement inertia.
If we were to apply a realistic animation to this making your character turn slowly there would be no point for having this command, so the abruptness of the animation is intentional.

For those players who play with a gamepad while laying down (meaning, they do not have a keyboard nearby), in order to make it so casting is not constantly canceled due to inertia movement, we have made adjustments on the server side so that casting is not possible until the server determines that movement has stopped. Also, minute adjustments will be made to inertia movement distance following this. (It is possible to setup macros for /facetarget)

With this, we’ve adjusted the operability so that there is no need to re-select the target even if you cancel while casting a spell.

We’ve made adjustments so that you can play with a controller while lying down just fine without using /facetarget if you aren’t too concerned with the quickest spell casting, so we would like you all to try this out and let us know your feedback.

The feature where you can freely setup shortcut keys on the gamepad involves a core system change and as such this will be supported via gamepad mode in the UI for 2.0.

I seem to recall there being some kind of .3 second delay arising from the server for movement canceling and recasting lag.

The .3 seconds you mentioned is the delay of movement packet delivery. (The explanation is filled with jargon and tech talk so I won’t write anymore than this.)

In regards to the video, in order to make it easy to understand we left a gap between the casting cancelation and recasting after the cancelation.
It’s actually possible to immediately recast without waiting for the animation or casting cancelation animation to finish.

It’s kind of hard to convey this image with text, but… (it’s also somewhat technical)

Begin casting ⇒Character movement by client ⇒Movement detection by server⇒
Cancel casting ⇒ Casting input by client ⇒ Server determines casting and if possible commences casting…

The client side VFX (effects) and animations function asynchronously, but the server determines whether recasting is possible or not by the quickest client to server communication without waiting on the graphics.

However, as I mentioned previously in a separate thread, FFXIV is a server/client type of online game, so everything that you input is sent to the server and until the server processes the functions and delivers the result to the client, a physical time delay will occur depending on everyone’s network environment.
This is the same for FFXI, FFXIV, WoW, Rift, and SWTOR.

Compared to stand-alone games, this spec is something that is essential for online games, so please understand.
(For the tech saavy, I will go ahead and say that there is still some room for packet queue streamlining.)

With all this said, for those of you who have feel like there is quite a bit of wait time between casting cancelation and recasting, please do not worry. It will be possible to recast in less than a 1/3 of that time.

I use keyboard and mouse, but I guess I would have sub-target off. I often use sub-target lol.

For players who use mouse and keyboard, I recommend the below settings:

・Config > System “Action Bar Display” ⇒ON
・Config > Target “Use sub-target when executing an action” ⇒OFF
・Change key bind for /facetarget to the “F” key

Use WASD to move, target with your mouse, press “F” for /facetarget to stop immediately, and execute a spell using the 1-0 shortcut keys (or clicking on the action bar with the mouse).
These are the same controls as other general MMOs.

Also, this is preference, but you can toggle the /actionqueue on/off.

Sorry for the lengthy post.

We also have another post from Yoshida coming later today as well, so be on the look out for it!

[Sigmakan]

Sounds great. Almost sounds like pressing H forces a position check. I wonder if this can be used to help combat some of the issues with Ifrit. Where on your screen it looks like you are out of eruption/plumes but you still get hit. Will hitting H as soon as you are clear(on your screen) help alleviate this? I hope so!

[Rydin]

Sounds great.

Really?
So either press a keyboard button before you cast a spell

or...

If you're on a controller... Wait a couple seconds after you see yourself stop before casting a spell?

How the hell does that sound great?