Pretty much thiS^^
If they actually manage to make it worse the third time around I'd be surprised
I recall waiting last time and hearing "Let's wait till Beta" "Lets wait till Open Beta" "Lets wait until official release"
Look what happened. There's nothing wrong with being concerned. I wrote in the OP that the system could be temporary, but that the GCT is a bad idea. I'm not going to sit on the sidelines, even if I can't get into the Alpha. So i'll post my thoughts on what I can see. :)
Yes that was in 1.0, but for this im confidence to say, if you "WANT" to critic or show concern, wait for "MORE" information...
We hell not know everything about 2.0's battle, have you seen Monks yet? Have you seen Warriors? have you seen Paladin? We can't know yet, until beta.
By beta then only then *after few days trying and etc* I will join your merry crusade of debating this pointless thread.
You may feel the thread is pointless, but I don't care. It was intended to start a discussion based on what we've seen. I never asked for anyone to agree with me. When we see more footage i'll of course come back and reassess the issue. When beta comes along i'll do the same thing. It's not a post it now, stop it now issue. I'm not going to sit and "hope." You have to speak up if you have a problem, and I have a problem with what I see currently.
Well, Okay..First foremost, Sorry if you feel offended.
I too was concern with the animation that was shown in the trailers last time, but now i dont mind it anymore and await for BETA because YoshiP has mention about it last week.
But for this is a bit of a wrong timing to talk about it, beside that there isn't enough Information about it either. Unless you can get full access to the games it self you may show concern. Right now is out right silly and only inviting more negativity than you possibly wanted.
The most reason and respond you will get from this is because there is only Alpha build to rely on the discussion, but really only with just 3 classes even thou it is indeed enough to measure it, i can assure you this whole GCT concern is nothing to be worried about at this moment.
When i say your timing is wrong, because well, because that is Alpha now. People get agitated when some complain about the game when is still in Alpha. Because you will most likely get respond that you are comparing on Alpha client, etc.
So my advice mostly to you is that stop now, come back later? :P
But then again, are your concern is the whole core system of the battle? because i read it that way and asking you this in case i am wrong.
My main concern is non stop spamming of your best weapon skills/spells repeatedly. Auto attacks don't have as much emphasis as they did. I don't want fights to end in a flash. Damage algorithms will probably change between the Alpha to Beta i'm sure so i'm not really worried on that front. However I do believe they will keep the GCT into the next phase. It does feel like a core component. Also I was not offended. =)
The system, the way it works now, is prone to have you just use your best skill repeatedly. There's pretty much no reason not to do this.
WS costing TP on combos makes this the case just as much as the removal of cooldowns on each specific WS.
What I think would be cool is if rather than placing a cooldown on the WS itself, there'd be a cooldown on the ability to use a WS in a combo without it costing TP so that you could use your favorite combos anytime but there'd still be advantages to using other combos.
They probably looked at WoW and decided that this is the way to win on the market. Yoshi-P explained how FFXI was born (with Everquest in mind), and what we are watching now is the same, but with a worse sample.
I'm happy for ALL the things ARR will take, but I admit to have some doubts on Battle Speed and the new Battle System. Personally I like the "old" one, it needed some tweaks but was not so bad.
I don't understand why is so difficult find a compromise between very long fight (FFXI) and very fast fight (FFXIV 1.0, and ARR from what we saw)...
And regarding your combo system: XIV combo system is a joke even a moron can pull them off as they flash for you. Now if they take the magic burst and skill chains from Xi and use them in Xiv than it would add some depth to battles, unlike now you just hit a flashing skills/spells to continue your combo as long as the players in the correct position, and getting into the correct position isnt rocket science.
I think the issue is with yoshi and the dev's. It is possibly that the devs are taking the easy route instead of actually sitting down and working out something that is not too fast and not too slow. Even in 1.o with all the changes yoshi couldnt find a balance and it seem this issue will continue into 2.0.