Visual doom indicator like some other FF games

[Ryce]

People are mean. It was just a suggestion.

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen". With such a pretty game, why do most classes spend most of their time staring at a chat log? Personally, I hate playing healer/support jobs because I have to stare at the HP bars to see if there are any noticeable status ailments or people needing cures. It would be much nicer to see the character models of the players in my party visually effected.

To the players who respond "I spend most of my time looking at the chat log anyway", please realize the reason you do this is because you have to do this. Are you saying you wouldn't rather look at your character, the battle animations, and the environmental graphics?

It's an old game and I'd never expect this to be changed now, even incrementally with things like a visual doom counter.

[Soranika]

People are mean. It was just a suggestion.

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen". With such a pretty game, why do most classes spend most of their time staring at a chat log? Personally, I hate playing healer/support jobs because I have to stare at the HP bars to see if there are any noticeable status ailments or people needing cures. It would be much nicer to see the character models of the players in my party visually effected.

To the players who respond "I spend most of my time looking at the chat log anyway", please realize the reason you do this is because you have to do this. Are you saying you wouldn't rather look at your character, the battle animations, and the environmental graphics?

It's an old game and I'd never expect this to be changed now, even incrementally with things like a visual doom counter.

Yes. Why would I want to be so self centered as a healer by looking at my own character if it isn't directly related to saying out of range of aoe attacks but still in range of curing? In both small parties and large alliances, there is not actual benefit for a WHM or any healer to be paying attention to the battle animation, especially when things start to lag. It's not like driving or what melee have to do where they're looking at the on screen actions and text log. Most of the time they don't have time to look at even their own HP if they feel uncomfortable with failing healing support. You may hate it, but the rest of us who do it more than others understood that when we got into that role. Our focus IS the watching everyone's HP and the chat log. No amount of visual graphics is going to help you anyway if you're staying outside of 20' yalm range of most aoe doom spells anyway. And I, personally, get fairly dizzy and admittedly confused when I'm looking at what's going on the battle field while trying to keep up with curing ailments and healing... so I speak for myself on that one. I don't like loosing my focus.

It's a good ideal, but it is, as said, redundant. As I said before, it doesn't matter how much time you have on doom. A good healer will keep spamming cursna until they see that it's been cured of the affliction, even more so if they see some one still spamming holy waters as any person fighting a creature that can doom should have anyway, just like mages should carry echo drops. If you can't simply type "doom" then you're screwed from the beginning. And if you're not directly engaging a monster that uses doom attacks, you should be staying out of range or else you deserve to die.

That's not being mean, that's speaking truth. You have to know how to cover your own butt, limitations or not. There's no excuse for not communicating your afflictions, even if it's just one word of the affliction or the cure. Doom, viruna, silence, silena, sleep, zzz, erase, slow, ect. Even adding plz to the end of asking for buffs if you want to be nice about it.

[Alhanelem]

Yes.

Then why aren't you playing one of the many MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) out there instead? No graphics, just pure text for you to stare at. The rest of us would like to focus on the view of the battle itself. Part of the reason for the visual damage/miss is to allow people to still see what's happening without having to only stare at the log window.

There's no excuse for not communicating your afflictions, even if it's just one word of the affliction or the cure. Doom, viruna, silence, silena, sleep, zzz, erase, slow, ect.

People already do this. But doom (and gradual petrify) are the only effects that have a set time limit. I see no reason why this time limit shouldn't be known to other players without you having to say yourself "10 9 8 7 6..." Most people already report status effects. But just saying 'doom' isn't enough for doom. Why are you so against a simple convenience? That's all it is, it doesn't kill skill. As much as we love FFXI, it has one of the worst and least informative UIs in the history of gaming. Conveying information that should be on the UI is a skill that shouldn't be required of players. As I said in another thread, "skill" should be in devising sound tactics, and then effectively and properly executing those tactics. Not battling poor UI design.

Even if someone says doom, especially given that cursna won't always succeed, it's good to know how much time is left so you can tell if you have enough time left to try to cure it. the disappearance of the visual indicator will also inform you more quickly than gluing your eyes to the constantly scrolling log, looking for the "soandso successfully removed soandso's doom" message," as we all know that the log window lags slightly behind what is happening.