Some suggestions, mostly quality of life, obvious things

[KittenJitsu]

For example my PLD, on the cross hot bar I get 4 slots taken up setting fast blade, savage blade, rage of halone and riot blade. If I had macros I could cut this down to 2 slots (halone combo and riot combo). But I don't have macros because i have to set /wait 3 instead of /wait 2.5. meaning im losing .5 seconds on the halone combo per skill so 1 second over all. If I do the halone combo 5 times per battle (not an unreasonable assumption).

I am not sure why it is not working at 2.5 seconds for you, but my macro for 2.5s works just fine. Let's say, however, if my GCD is 2.48 seconds then my macro will not register the .48. It must be 2.5. I believe that is what he was talking about. People want to set macro /wait timers to .00 decimal so the macro will register the .48. What some players may not realize is that macro execution is slower than humans. So even if the macro is set up exactly right, your reaction will always be faster than the macros. They did this on purpose so you have to be more involved than macro spamming like in WoW.

In conclusion macros are still very useful and will clear up a lot of your hotkey slots. For example as a PLD you have 7-10 defense buffs at end-game. To easily clear this up you can create one macro to cast all 7 buffs in one slot. I personally do this and love it. I also have a macro set up so when I cast fast blade I will cast Fight or Flight or bloodbath after a .5 second delay. Macro is a life savior for OCD organizational purposes.

[Soukyuu]

From a technological standpoint, this is possible to implement. Actually, up until midway through the Beta Test, it was possible to indicate up to the first decimal place. However, for the initial phases of FFXIV: ARR's operation, we decided to lower the degree of accuracy on this.

The reason being that there was a concern that the convenience would exceed the purpose of the macro feature.

Here is the macro feature policy for FFXIV:
Do not make it so macros must be used.
Minimizing and optimizing actions without error beyond that of human control is not allowed.
Make it a support feature that can be used by people that are a bit shaky at controlling the game to ensure control, while not making it 100% optimized.
The player makes the execution decision. We will not be implementing a feature where the macros makes its own decisions. For example: We will not be implementing a feature that executes things based on certain criteria (player status, enemy HP, certain actions, etc.)
Due to the above reasoning, we limited the degree of accuracy for the wait times.

Of course, there are games where the policies outlined above differ*, but we felt that this policy is the best for the current XIV.

Naturally this doesn't mean that we keep it the way it is forever. We'll continue to make adjustments as we keep an eye on the situations happening in PvP and large-scale instanced raids, so please just keep the above policy in mind when offering feedback and making requests.

*For example, we won't be having a gambit system like what was in FINAL FANTASY XII. The aims between the automated strategy system for XII and the control support macro feature of XIV are totally different.

While I understand the reasoning behind that, it's still quite silly the macro system is not in sync with the default GCD of the game. At least make it 0.5s accuracy, since that will only make it execute skills asap on default 2.5s GCD. Having to lose more than 0.5s on macros makes them useless for most scenarios (e.g. a quick raise without having to waste a second slot for Swiftcast on a gamepad)

[Jonny_Tapas]

When I log into my Inn Room and select the door and click the action key. Leave your Inn Room defaults to "No"

A minor quality of life issue but usually when you walk up to a door and click it... It's because you want to go through it! How about defaulting to yes! I can't think of any other reason to select and use an action on the door.

[Camate]

Hello, everyone!

Thanks for all the feedback and questions on companions. I'd like to take a moment and answer some of them with what I can.

Please improve companions so they can learn all of the skills.

While we do not have any plans of making it so all of the skills can be acquired, in the future we are planning to increase the skill point cap.

I'd really like to be able to ride my chocobo companion while it's by my side.

As there is a possibility that this increases the amount of stress that is placed on the server, we will be looking into this very carefully.

It's hard to tell how long I have left with my companion.

We understand that the remaining time left with your companion is difficult to tell, and we are currently thinking of ways to improve this.

It's really hard to get experience points for my companion. Can you make it a bit easier to level them up?

Instead of simply increasing the experience points your companions acquire, we will be enhancing their usability and increasing the opportunities in which experience points can be acquired by making it possible to summon your companions while being queued for the Duty Finder.

We just discovered the barding for companions and how you earn it, so could you please implement a way to redistribute the skill points?

As the requirement for obtaining the barding is to max out the skill points of your companion's stance, we are currently looking into a way to redistribute your points.

The companion AI is somewhat lackluster, so could you please make adjustments to it?

We'll be continuing to look at companion AI, but to give you an idea of one thing that is planned for after patch 2.1, we will be improving the AI for the defender stance.

[Camate]

Hello,

We understand that a good amount of players are asking for more hot bar displays for the PS3 version.
UI lead Hiroshi Minagawa has a comment about this and would also like to explain about current development plans for the PS3 version.

Hello.
Before I respond to this thread, I would like to inform you about the current situation for the PS3 version.

• Focus target support
  Focus target support for the PS3 version is just about completed, and we've set the goal to address this in patch 2.1. Adjustments had to be made as we're in a situation where we've already reached the display limitation, and we've made it possible to display this by temporarily hiding the experience points bar and basic HUD information (connection status, clock, etc. in the upper right) while the focus target information is displayed. We are currently in the midst of checking everything out including macros and key bind shortcuts.
  
• Expansion of cross hotbar input controls
  Additionally for patch 2.1, we've expanded the controls so that you will be able to press the L2 and R2 buttons simultaneously to change to a different set display and execute actions while the buttons are held down. (You can indicate which set is switched to in the configuration.)
  
  Originally, in order to change sets with the R1 button you had to take your finger off of the L2 or R2 button, but with this control expansion you can simply press the R2 button while pressing the L2 button (or the opposite) and swap to a different set with other actions. With this method you’ll be able to swap to different sets two steps quicker.

By addressing these two features, I feel you'll be able to grasp the battle situation much better and also execute more actions easily.

Now then, on to the actual topic of this thread – increasing the number of hot bars displayed. As we've just about run out of excess display elements that we can cut as a trade-off for an increase in display elements, as a future plan for addressing this, we'll be creating a lower resource version of the current display UI separately, and with the resources that are generated from that, make it so only action icons are displayed.

We will continue to look into plans for implementing more hotbar displays for the PS3 version, but I'd like you all to try out the expanded controls in patch 2.1 that I've outline above.

You'll be able to quickly execute 16 additional actions with much more ease than the original controls for switching sets.

[StarMarmot]

An option at the menders to repair all my sets of gear at once if that wasn't suggested already.

[Iecerint]

Focustarget and extra display are GREAT news. Hallelujah!

[Camate]

One last bit of information from me today!

We are planning to make it easier to distinguish the main scenario quests in your duty list with the use of different icons, similar to those used in the journal.

[Victor]

Will companion skill point redistribution make it in time for 2.1?

[Kagoma]

One last bit of information from me today!

We are planning to make it easier to distinguish the main scenario quests in your duty list with the use of different icons, similar to those used in the journal.

A little late for some if not most of us but still good for those who are more casual or just starting up. Will look forward to trying this out on an alt or when more story quests come out.