Visual doom indicator like some other FF games

[Alhanelem]

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen"

That basically sums it up... I'm glad someone is able to express it more eloquently than I can. :P

[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.

[noodles355]

Chances are, if the healer misses "Monster uses Mortal Ray. Player2 is doomed.", they will also miss the icon replacing their linkshell changing too. Good healers know when players are doomed because they read the chatlog. Bad healers miss it, and would also miss this.

[Alhanelem]

I don't care if you're a good healer or a bad healer. It's useful to some, and harms no one. The only issue is dev time required and therefore likelyhood of implementation. Which is fair to say, but does not itself have any bearing on whether it's a good feature or not. In reality, i'd like visual ways of notifying of all kinds of debuffs, giving the player the choice of using the log or the game screen. But I started with the doom counter, because I think it might be easy to leverage an existing system (the on screen damage display).

[MSTRLied]

My two cents?... This system would't be to reliable due to the fact most people who are gonna be in range of doom will probably be armor changing blinking so the names as well as their icons would just disappear with them... by the time they reappear 2 seconds left...

(Although I do wonder why so many personal attacks... I think replacing the icon with a zz or a skull indicating a status effect would be nice, cute, and quirky. )

[Runespider]

Would be nice to have status ailment icons like this (maybe even just on the name/party bar) but it's quite a big addition given the current dev team situation. Like the idea but they are struggling to give us proper content to do let alone minor stuff like this.

[Bulrogg]

I'd like a /doom emote to convey my status aliment the same way I do when I'm /doze or /mute.

[Kensagaku]

My two cents on this...

I don't feel it's necessary, in all honesty. Don't get me wrong, I think it could have its benefits, but the problem is still a lack of attention. If you know a monster can cast a single-target doom, you're ready to cursna the hate target. If it's an AoE doom, you want to be ready to cursna bomb the tanks before the DDs (or the main DDs if they're the tanks, i.e. WAR etc). All melee fighting an AoE doom-using mob should have Holy Waters or be prepared to run in/out if they can't bother to take the time to prepare. And in the event that multiple people do end up getting cursed, a simple "doomed" should suffice.

Your biggest argument is that the chat log can get flooded in battle between people yelling doom and an alliance of people wailing on one mob. Two issues with this, in my opinion: 1) If you're fighting with an alliance and the majority of them get doomed without any way to remove it (holy waters or cursna if a mage happens to wander too close for god knows what reason) then that's just abysmal planning. 2) Chat filters. Why is the concept of chat filters so hard? People get doomed, they say doomed. Mages place priority order and remove curse as they can.

Even if a person's at 3 seconds it's worth giving it a shot as well, as I know I've been saved at 1-2 seconds more than once simply because I wasn't high on the priority list and had to get tossed a cursna later on. The mage order of operations in these situations is generally Cursna tanks > keep tank's HP up > Cursna others if tank is doing okay. Generally they'll try until a person hits the ground, and a simple typing of "doomed" or "doom" should suffice to say if you're still afflicted, with "clear" to state that they're good to go.

tl;dr - It'd be nice but it's not necessary by a long shot.

[Vyvian]

A good healer has to be observing the screen, whether they realize it or not. At a split second glance a person would recognize a doom symbol over a player much faster than it could be typed. Perhaps the healer already knew that doom was coming, but sometimes people screw up and don't stand where they are supposed to be standing and also got doomed. Usually you notice that too, but sometimes too much happens at once.

And lets face it, if your fighting a doom mob, the people tanking will have holy waters, but the guy thinking he's never pulling hate (like the THF or a RDM) never has them. Perhaps that's oversight on their part. If 3 people get doomed by apocalyptic ray because they all stood in a line because they failed to understand tauri mechanics, you'd see that onscreen faster than the chat log would load that it happened, and faster than all 3 people would type /p doom. In addition, you would see immediately on its removal as a visual indicator would dissapear. Cursna has an abysmal cast time and recast time, wasting casts because the person types that it came off too slow means you might not get to save a second person.